I Do Believe in Spooks
by Objessions
Summary: MacGyver 2016 - Supernatural Crossover Jack Dalton reconnects with some distant cousins and Mac learns that not everything is as simple as the scientific method. As always, I own none of these guys and I'm just here to play. Expect some action, some adventure, some salty mouths, and some hurt/comfort because whumping other people's characters is the best.
1. Chapter 1

"I dunno man. This shit's creepy."

Mac snickered. "Like the Bermuda Triangle?"

"Mac … I know you think it's funny but …"

"Dude, I don't _thin_ k it's funny. I _know_ it's funny. What the hell was it you were worried about back in Helmond that first time when all those kids went missing. A … rugoo? And then a vampire? But it had to be a red head, right?"

"That's rougarou, smartass. And yeah, there's stories of vampires all over that part of the world. And no, I wasn't worried about them in the same place … See, a rougarou is like a werewolf, and werewolves and vampires are like natural enemies."

Mac snickered. "Did you do anything other than watch B-movies and seduce sorority girls the whole time you were in college … or ..?"

Jack huffed with indignation. Then he smirked. "Don't dismiss the charms of sorority sisters so easily, young Angus."

"Jack Wyatt Dalton, what have we agreed?"

"That if I don't say Angus, you won't make me do math?"

"There ya go, buddy." Mac grinned. "You gotta stop getting in your own head about missions like this, Jack. This is a pretty straightforward human trafficking thing. And so near the border with Mexico? It's probably tied up with that shit from the Sinaloa cartel Matty put us onto a couple months ago. That's obviously why she tapped us for this."

Jack frowned. "Yeah … Maybe. But that close to the border, it could be a Chupacabra," Jack said with what Mac found to be a disturbing amount of sincere concern.

"It's not a Mexican goat sucker, Jack," Mac sighed with real exasperation. "None of that stuff exists. There's no evidence."

"So what? There's no evidence of Santa Claus either, but every year you …"

"Dude, first of all, you know I mostly do that to screw with you."

Jack made his skeptical face.

"Okay … Fine … Not mostly. But the thing is it really is based on being a scientific thinker. Absence of evidence can't be used as evidence of absence. It's just science, Jack."

"So why can't my stuff be real then, genius? It's the same thing!"

Mac shook his head stubbornly. "It isn't though. There've been countless incidents of people presenting so called evidence and it's always debunked as faked. So there's more evidence that people don't even really believe this stuff is real than there is that it could be."

"I … You … Why?" Jack huffed a frustrated breath. He just couldn't argue with Mac when he got like this.

Mac grinned at him. "This is gonna be some run of the mill mission, Jack. We'll bust up the bad guys, hopefully get the missing persons back, and then we'll go home. And nothing more exciting than trying to avoid the press is gonna happen. This is just another day, Jack."

"But there's that request for Phoenix from the locals."

Mac paused in looking over the notes he had pulled up on his tablet. "Yeah? I missed that part."

"'Cause you were already reading, bud."

Mac frowned this time. Phoenix wasn't exactly widely known. "That's weird."

Jack shook his head, turning on the blinker for the appropriate exit. "I have a feelin' we ain't even gotten started on weird, kid."

0-0-0

Mac glanced up when he felt the car slow. They were pulling to the dirt parking lot of about the seediest looking bar Mac had ever laid eyes on, and he'd been in some real dives, all over the world. The blinking neon sign advertised drinks and food. The place was called The Bull Run, and the daisyduke and cowboy hat wearing cartoon woman on the sign was astride a cartoon bull.

"Classy," Mac observed. "Why aren't we at the police station, Jack? We had a late lunch. You can wait until after we meet with the local cops, can't you?"

Jack looked Mac's way and shrugged. "It was the cops who wanted to meet here. The guys who made the request to Phoenix are off duty now and they also figured the consult was better off away from their boss, I guess."

Mac grinned. "Are you sure this wasn't a Jack suggestion? Because we both know you think with your stomach first whenever we're on the road, man."

Jack didn't respond, just put the rental into park and sat looking at the entrance to the bar for a minute.

"Jack, lighten up," Mac coaxed with a teasing grin. "If it's a Chupacabra, I'll take point."

Finally, Jack looked his way and smirked. "I'm gonna hold you to that, kid."

They got out and headed inside. As the opened the door, Jack took a deep breath. "Now I was gonna say that even I couldn't eat in a place that looked this bad, but man oh man, do you smell that grill?"

Mac laughed. "It's your digestive system, pal. You do you."

As they walked in, Mac was struck by how busy and noisy the place was. Not exactly a great location for a meeting with a professional consult you'd requested. Better meeting for covering up noise, having an un-overheard conversation.

Jack put a hand up in front of his partner to stop him going any further. "Well, I'll be damned."

"What is it?" Mac asked, frowning.

"I know those guys." Jack tipped his chin at two guys sitting across the bar in one of the booths. The shorter broader shouldered fellow had a police badge attached to his belt, just visible as he leaned back casually, talking to the tall very lean man across from him.

"You know our local connection?"

"Um, yeah … They're my cousins, actually."

"Do I know them?" Mac asked with a frown, squinting at the guys, trying to place them. He thought he'd met most of Jack's Texas family at one reunion or Fourth of July party or another.

"Nah, bud. They're not from Texas. I prob'ly never woulda met them at all, but our dads crossed paths in the war, so they tried to look out for each other when it was over a little."

"Oh. So they know you work for a think tank? I mean at least that would explain the request ... although I can't imagine why they wouldn't just have called you."

Jack shook his head. "Nah, man. I haven't seen these guys in … fifteen years maybe. I don't know how …" He turned to Mac. "Can you gimme a minute, maybe? Like go get us a couple beers and some food or somethin'?"

Mac widened his eyes, looking around. "I'll go get _you_ some food if you want."

"Thanks, bud," Jack said absently, and strode across the bar toward the two guys leaning toward one another and talking earnestly, only interrupted when the shorter man paused to bite and chew an obscenely large burger.

Mac heard Jack call out, "Dean!" and the guy looked up with a wry smile that made Mac think he could maybe see a family resemblance. Then he turned to order Jack one of the house specialty, proudly advertised as their Heart-Attack Burger, and a couple of beers. Mac ordered himself an IPA, thinking that maybe it had enough alcohol to kill whatever was likely to be on the glasses in a place like this.

When he approached the table with their tray a short time later, Mac overheard Jack speaking.

"So, my partner thinks that this is all tied to some stuff we investigated around the Sinaloa cartel and their human trafficking and drug running activities a couple months ago."

Dean saw the blond approaching and just raised his eyebrows at Jack with a wry grin. "Oh, Jacky-boy, I think our bad guy's from a lot further south."

Mac set the tray down on the table directly in front of Jack.

"Like Guatemala?" he asked.

He'd heard of some political unrest in Central America. Maybe this was more complicated that he had thought.

The man smirked up at him. "Not exactly, kid. Like _all_ the way south."

"Huh?" Mac shook his head, like maybe he didn't understand the words that had come out of Jack's cousin's mouth.

The shaggy haired tall guy sitting next to Jack gave Mac an almost sympathetic look. "Hi, you must be Jack's partner … MacGyver, right?"

Mac nodded, still looking wary.

"I'm Sam Winchester and this is my brother Dean. And in case you hadn't gotten a read on him yet, he likes to screw with the new guy. Always. When he says 'south' he's being metaphorical."

"Metaphorical?" Mac threw a glare at Jack and at Dean.

Dean just gave a double raise of his eyebrows.

Mac snapped, "What the hell?"

A grin split Dean's whole face. "Exactly, kid."


	2. Chapter 2

Things didn't exactly improve from there.

They got Mac to join them to talk. But beyond introductions and a little reminiscing of wholesome family fun among the cousins, when it became clear that both Jack and the Winchesters believed the disappearances out here, about twenty miles from Brownsville, were some sort of otherworldly event, Mac very nearly got up and left the table.

"Mac," Dean said, feeling a little more kindly disposed toward the kid, whose rigid adherence to what he had learned from books reminded him of Sammy when he was younger (and sometimes now – if he wanted to drive Dean crazy). "I know this is a lot, but when we reached out for help … We need the resources Jack can offer. Like bein' a crack shot and not running away just 'cuz things go a little sideways. Can't count on help outside the family in a situation like this. It's not a joke, kid."

"Nobody sitting around in a dive bar, getting comfortably numb," Mac gestured toward the empty bottles littering the table, "Is serious about much, other than waking up with a hangover."

Sam nodded, after throwing Dean one of his patented can't you just be serious and maybe not get wasted glares. "Mac, I'm sorry. We should have called Jack directly. Then he could have filled you in on the way here. We think we've tumbled to something big. Not just a ghost or some crypto … I mean an animal with supernatural properties …" Sam started to explain.

"I'm familiar with cryptozoology. Also known as playing pretend and calling it science. Did you guys come up with this while I was at the bar … or did you plan this out in advance? Because I'm in no mood. Your cousin should know better than to throw down in a prank war with me, by now." Mac said, voice dripping with derision.

"Okay," Sam said drawing the word out, and trying to maintain his patience. This life was hard for anyone to accept, say nothing about a guy who was steeped in the sciences, and not even the theoretical kind, but applied sciences. Sam looked to Jack to try to convince his partner that this was real.

"Mac, I swear, this isn't a joke and I didn't know these guys were gonna be here."

Mac got up, giving his partner a look Jack hadn't seen in a long time. It was the Mac's ready for a fight look, which meant he was either truly convinced that Jack was playing him, or he was convinced he wasn't and that freaked him right out.

"Jack, I didn't come all the way to the Mexican border so you and your … frat buddies … could play a practical joke on me. You're lucky I don't call Matty and tell her this was some kind of weird payback for the Jack's-little-fanny photo album!"

Mac was pretty clearly furious. His hands were clenching and he decided he'd better go get some air before he actually lost his temper and decked his partner. Something that he really didn't want to do but which felt imminent.

Jack got to his feet too and tried again. "Look, Mac, I know this is a lot, but …"

"It's too much. And I'm not winding up jumping out of my skin over one of you chuckleheads in a mask jumping out of the motel closet in the middle of the night. We could be doing real work, Jack!"

He stalked out of the bar.

Jack dropped back and looked almost helplessly at Dean. "Dude, how do I even ..?"

Dean nodded toward the door. They headed outside and found Mac pacing in the parking lot.

Dean cleared his throat, not so subtly. "Listen, Mac, this isn't a prank. We called Phoenix because Jack's backed us up before … a long time ago … And we're kind of cut off from our own professional resources at the moment."

Mac frowned. "What is it you guys even do?" He was eyeing their jeans and Army surplus attire with a skeptical eye.

Sam smirked, he couldn't help it. He remembered being just as skeptical as this guy. Only for him he was like seven years old when Dean finally couldn't keep it from him anymore. He gave Mac a one shouldered shrug. "Probably pretty similar to what you guys do. Saving people, hunting things."

Dean picked up the thread. "But for us, it's the family business."

Mac just glared at the three cousins. "Nice try."

He turned and started to head over to his and Jack's rental car.

"Alright, kid," Dean sighed, sounding too much like Jack for even his own liking. "You asked for it."

Mac turned anticipating some sort of threat from the tone, even though Dean sounded regretful.

When he spun back toward the group, Dean shook his head in an apology. "Hey, Cas!" he called.

Mac jumped when a man in a beige trench coat appeared behind Jack's cousin and said, "Hullo, Dean," in a pleasant gravelly voice.

He stumbled back a step. "I … um …" Mac ran a hand through his already tousled hair. "How did you ..? I mean … Who are ..? Um …"

Jack's eyes were a little wide, but Dean gave him a reassuring little nod, before tilting his head at MacGyver, indicating Jack should maybe step closer to his friend and partner.

"Jack Dalton, Angus MacGyver, I'd like to introduce you to our good friend Castiel."

"Hello, friends of the Winchesters." The man gave a formal nod.

Mac's eyes had gotten very wide and Jack thought maybe he was holding his breath.

Sam helpfully supplied, "He's an angel," in a matter-of-fact tone.

Jack didn't take his eyes off the guy who'd just materialized behind Dean, but his felt Mac reach out and grip his forearm almost painfully. Then he heard Mac whisper, "This isn't happening. This can't logically be happening. This is another friend of Jack's who was hiding out here. Everything is fine. I am totally fine and not losing my mind even at all."

Sam, seeing the stubborn resolve on Mac's face, even as the younger man tried to talk himself out of what he knew he was seeing, took out his phone and held it up. "Hey, Cas." The other man looked at Sam expectantly. "Say cheese."

Cas smiled very obligingly in Sam's direction and Sam took a picture with the flash on.

Mac sat down on the ground.

Jack squatted down next to him. "Mac, buddy, you okay, pal?"

"He … Jack … I think maybe I'm seeing things. Like I know I blew off getting checked out after Kiev and you were so sure I had a concussion … I … You were right. I think maybe we should track down an urgent care place … because …" Mac trailed off, swallowing repeatedly.

Sam nodded at Jack and held out his phone. Jack got up and took it. He looked at the screen and gave Sam a little nod of thanks. Last time he'd seen that kid he hadn't been shaving yet and here he was, a Hunter, and reading this situation like a pro.

Mac needed evidence, so that's what Sam had gotten him.

Jack sat right down on the ground next to his partner. He slung his arm over Mac's shoulders and instead of pulling away because there were three other people looking at them, Mac leaned into Jack's side. Jack squeezed those shoulders gently.

"Mac, you know me …" Mac nodded, glancing at Jack's face and then quickly back at the dark-haired man who had appeared out of nowhere. "So, you know, if I thought you had a concussion and were actually voluntarily heading toward getting it taken care of, we'd already be in the car on our way there, right?"

Mac's eyes darted to Jack's softly serious face again. "I … usually, yeah, but …"

"Bud, I know you like evidence … And I don't like to do this … But I need you to believe this is not a trick. This is real. And these guys really need our help."

He heard Mac swallow several times and the kid opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

Jack sighed and put Sam's phone in his partner's hands.

On the screen, Mac could see Dean, the shadowed back wall of the bar as a back drop. And off to the side, stood a man of about Dean's age, wearing a rumpled dark suit and a light, well-pressed trench coat, smiling faintly, and seeming to look into the depths of the eyes of the viewer.

All that was fine. Mac had no trouble with that.

Then he looked at the wall behind the two men in the photo, their shadows thrown into sharp relief by the camera flash.

The smiling man, the … one Sam said was an angel … His shadow had wings!

Jack looked into his partner's face just in time to see his eyes roll up into his head, so he was able to hold onto him and keep him from just slumping to the ground when he went completely limp from the shock of his entire worldview being destroyed by a few phrases and one sharp digital photo.

Jack looked up at the Winchesters and their friend Castiel with a pained grimace. "Now what?"

Dean shrugged. "Now we take him back to the motel. He's gonna need a minute."

Sam nodded sagely and Castiel said with earnest sincerity. "He's going to have a terrible headache. When he wakes up, I would be happy to be of assistance, friend of Dean."

Jack looked back at the angel, shifting Mac's weight in his arms. "I'll take all the assistance I can get."


	3. Chapter 3

Mac came back to himself slowly, roused by the sounds of soft conversation and the quiet click of a keyboard from not very far away. His head was pounding. Like bad concussion or vicious migraine pounding. He couldn't for the life of him remember hitting his head or lying down with a headache though.

And he was lying down. The mattress was overly firm and the pillow thin. He had a brief moment where he wondered what the hell he was doing at Medical. He didn't remember anything. Wait, no … he remembered getting off the plane at the Brownsville Airport and picking up their beige rental sedan that Jack had bitched incessantly about as they made the short drive out to the small town of Los Reyes.

He even remembered pulling up outside a seedy bar and thinking that maybe he was a little hungry but there was no way in hell he was going to eat anything cooked inside that place. After that - nothing. But, he shifted a little on the bed and neither the pillow nor the mattress made the tell-tale crinkling noise that would tell him this was a hospital bed.

He wanted to open his eyes and orient himself, but the thudding in his temples was too insistent at the moment. He flexed his feet and discovered he was still wearing his shoes. That was probably a good sign. He took in the rest of his body. Still dressed. Okay, awesome. Then he realized someone was sitting on the bed next to him. And it wasn't Jack, because as he became more fully conscious, he processed that one of the quiet voices nearby was his partner.

No matter how much his head hurt, it was time. Mac pried his eyes open. The face looking down at him was familiar somehow. Bright pale blue eyes, tousled short brown hair, face badly in need of a shave, a kind smile. Mac felt his heartrate increasing but couldn't figure out why.

Then the man spoke.

"Hello, Angus MacGyver. It is good to see you awake. Your friend, Jack Dalton, has been very concerned."

The husky voice and odd speech patter brought everything back in a tidal wave of memory.

Mac gasped, almost choking on the breath and pushed himself up to sitting, backing away from the man by digging with his feet until his back was pressed against the headboard. His eyes were widening entirely against his wishes and he could feel himself pulling in ragged panicked breaths. Finally, through a supreme act of will, he just squeezed his eyes shut against both the pounding in his head and the reality he was not interested in accepting.

He heard Jack's voice get closer. "Hey, Cas." The familiar way Jack used the name made Mac cringe. Jack was part of this thing, this impossibility. "Give us a minute, wouldja?"

"Of course," Cas said, sounding entirely agreeable. Mac could actually hear the concern for him in this man's – this angel's (his brain supplied helpfully and he found the thought less painful than it had been a moment before) voice. "He is in pain. I will be nearby."

Mac felt the angel move off the bed and Jack's familiar weight settle onto it next to him. Jack put his hands on Mac shoulders and Mac felt his solid presence. His breath immediately slowed. "Hey, bud. You're okay, man. This is a lot, I know, kid, but you're okay. I'm okay. We're still just here to help people just like we always are and …"

Mac felt the corner of his mouth lift, even though it sent a stabbing pain shooting through his head. Jack sounded about as worried and helicoptery as he ever got. "I'm okay, Jack," he said quietly. "I just need a minute."

Jack took his hands away to give Mac a little of the physical space he knew his partner needed, but didn't get off the bed. He was half worried the kid was just going to pass out again. For a guy that was as concrete and practical as Mac could be, this had to feel like he couldn't cram it into his ginormous brain.

Mac understood so much about the world that most people never even wrapped the tiniest portion of their brain around, Jack figured his head had to be a lot more full than the average. Now it had to make room for the existence of a whole other world that Mac didn't know the rules of.

Mac opened his eyes again, if only to reassure Jack. Jack smiled at him in that tentative way he had when he knew Mac was hurt and he was just trying to keep his own shit together long enough to get him help. "Sorry I checked out on you, partner," Mac said, managing not to sound as shaky as the headache had him feeling.

"I more than understand, kid," Jack said, his smile relaxing into a real one, one that looked a little wry. "When I found out that all this stuff wasn't just makebeleive, I …"

"Took off into the woods to puke his guts for a while and then come running back when he realized the stuff that was going bump in the night was probably hiding in those woods," Dean supplied coming over and leaning against the wall near the bed.

Mac looked surprised. "You?"

"Hell yeah, me," Jack replied. "I wasn't afraid of anything, by God, and I was already a soldier, faced down things I thought were a lot scarier than some picture in a book that somebody must've faked."

Mac nodded for him to go on, eyes locked on his face, not even glancing when he felt Sam settle onto the foot of the bed in this dim motel room. "And?"

"And I was home on leave. First time I'd gotten to come home, and when I walked into the kitchen at the ranch there was that little shit eatin' the cookies my mom had made," he tipped his head toward Dean. "And his dad and mine were in the office talkin' up a storm. Our little buddy Dean, who I hadn't seen since he was a little kid all surly and almost a teenager tells me that our neighbors have been loosin' cattle to a Chupacabra."

"Seriously?" Mac asked, starting to rub his forehead.

"Seriously," Sam answered. "Dean has never been known for his subtlety."

Mac had to snicker at the glare Dean threw his brother just then. It was a familiar look of humorous betrayal he and Jack shared often. "What about you?" Mac asked.

"Oh, our Sammy is pretty subtle," Dean answered with a slight edge to his voice. "Usually because he's hiding something really important that he ought to tell me but doesn't want me to worry about."

"Sound familiar?" Jack asked with a mock-glare.

"Subtle I may be," Sam said, and a shared eyeroll with Mac. "But I wasn't there at the time. Too young they said. Still practically a baby they said. I was staying with our dad's friend Bobby."

"Anyhow," Jack continued. "I took back my damned plate of cookies and went and dumped my gear in my old room. Then my Mama came and said the guys wanted to talk to me. She looked so sorry about it too. She knew I was beat since she'd picked me up at the airport and I'd slept all the way home, but it wasn't the sort of request you said no to. You know?"

Mac just nodded.

"And then they told me why there was most of the Winchester family in my house instead of my extended family for the expected welcome home party. John, that's their dad; he had pictures of the thing killin' cattle. And my dad knew him from the war, wasn't just family. They trusted each other. I never doubted for a second those pictures were real."

"That's when the lunch refunding started," Dean tacked on.

"Yup," Jack agreed with not hesitation. "I wasn't ever the superstitious type. I'd never been afraid of the dark or monsters or any of that other stuff that freaks kids out. Mostly I spent my childhood afraid of bein' bored, because everything else was just a story."

Mac grinned a little at that. The Jack he knew was superstitious as hell and when it wasn't just a regular old bad guy or bomb or something, he had a tendency to jump at shadows. Then he frowned. "That's why you're … Like the Bermuda Triangle … And Bigfoot … And ghosts and all that. You're not being a wuss or a conspiracy theorist. You're not even being dramatic. You're actually afraid of that stuff …" Mac looked down at his hands. "Because you know it's real."

Jack shrugged. "Yeah."

Mac looked back up into his partner's eyes. "Why haven't you ever said anything? Why just let me be a jerk to you about it?"

"You've never really been a jerk about it, Mac," Jack assured him. "And even if I'd tried to tell you … Would you have believed me?"

Mac shook his head, hand straying up to his right temple and massaging absently. "No. Almost definitely not."

"Okay. How're you doing with this now?" Jack asked carefully.

Mac shook his aching head. "I'm … I mean, you've shown me evidence. Even if I'm uncomfortable with the conclusions that evidence leads me to draw, I don't have much choice but to accept it."

Jack patted him on the leg. "Can I do anything to help right now?"

"Where's our stuff?" Mac asked.

"Out in the car. I can run and grab it. What do you need?" Jack asked.

"Aspirin? And maybe a protein bar?" Mac asked tentatively.

Sam got up. "Hang on a minute. Why don't Mac and I take a walk while you guys catch up. The convenience store up the block has sandwiches and salads and fruit and hardboiled eggs and everything in their case. Better dinner than rations for someone who's just had a bad shock, right?"

He said it to everyone, but he was looking at Mac.

Mac nodded. "The food sounds good. But I don't think I wanna walk very far with this headache if I don't have to. It's one of the worst I've ever had … And we get blown up a lot."

He grinned at Jack then and Jack laughed, feeling a whole lot better about Mac's involvement that he had when he'd been very heatedly whispering to Dean that he didn't mind getting dragged into family business, but they had no business involving his young partner, too.

Sam looked almost tentative. "There's a better solution than aspirin, but I don't want you to freak out," he said, almost squinting at Mac.

Mac was shooing Jack off the bed and swinging his legs over the side so he could rest his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands for a moment. "Such as?"

"Hey, Cas," Sam called softly.

There was no sound but, the feeling in the room shifted. Mac glanced up and the kind, slightly shy looking man – angel – was back, standing near the foot of the bed next to Sam.

"Hello, again," he said gently, reading the situation a little better than he had earlier. "Sam has called me to help with your headache."

It was pretty obvious to Mac that either the angel was reading Sam's thoughts, or they'd talked before he'd come to. Of course, the angel knew he had a headache so the odds of it just being a discussion seemed slim. Mac frowned deeply, but he nodded. "I … um … okay?"

It came out as a question, and he hadn't meant to let it, but he no longer felt panicked by even the idea that this normal looking person could be an angel and found that even the idea of letting him touch him or work some kind of magic on him (or however the hell angels did anything) didn't even really bother him at the moment.

In fact, if the angel could make this headache go away, he thought maybe they'd be friends for life. Well, none of that was strictly true. He was still quietly freaking out a little. But it was more like the freaking out he felt when he was faced with a complicated bomb to diffuse. It was uncomfortable and unpleasant, but he could control it, ignore it, and continue to act as rationally as he needed to. For a while at least.

Cas approached slowly, reading his thoughts for sure if the subtle changes in his expression were any indication. "You are one of the good ones," Cas pronounced. "I like you."

"Um … thanks?" Mac responded, mentally cursing how everything that was coming out of his mouth sounded uncertain at the moment.

Cas sat down next to him. "The enormity of this pain is caused by how hard it is for you to accept a reality you do not have a framework for." Mac nodded. That actually summed up the feeling behind the pain pretty well. "I can improve how you feel, but until your mind constructs the new pathways for this sort of information, you may continue to struggle with it periodically. And new information may aggravate this."

Mac nodded again. From a neurological standpoint, that made perfect sense.

Cas went on, "You soul must expand to encompass the new person you will become because of this increased burden."

Now that sounded like the sort of bullshit chaplains and shrinks had been saying to him for years, but Mac kept his mouth shut, biting back the reply that he wasn't sure he believed in souls.

Cas chuckled softly, and Mac could feel Sam and Dean's amusement as well. "These thoughts are why you will continue to struggle, Angus MacGyver. But I will do my best to help you."

Mac almost flinched away when Castiel reached out, but Jack's steady hand suddenly on his shoulder, and his own determination to assimilate this experience, kept him still. He barely registered that he'd been touched when his headache was gone. Somehow that made the experience a little easier to deal with.

He opened his eyes and showed Cas a very genuine smile. "Thanks."

"You are very welcome, Angus MacGyver. I get more practice healing humans than I generally care for."

He gave Dean a very pointed look that made Mac nearly crack up.

"If these guys are anything like their cousin, I'm sure that's true," he said. "And hey, please call me Mac. All my friends do."

Cas beamed and turned to Sam. "Take this young one and feed him before he faints again. I like him awake."

Sam shrugged and looked to Mac. "You up to it?"

"Yeah, definitely."

"Alright. Let's go so you don't disappoint Cas by needing another nap."

After they left, Cas sat down at the table with Dean and Jack. "Apologize to Jack Dalton," he said to Dean very seriously.

"What the hell for?" Dean asked, tone already offended before he even knew the reasoning.

"How would you feel if someone purposely endangered Sam?"

"What's that have to do with anything? Sam's my brother and …"

Cas interrupted. "Exactly."

Jack grinned at Castiel. "I was reserving judgement about you, but I think I like you already."


	4. Chapter 4

Los Reyes wasn't exactly a thriving metropolis. In fact it wasn't even much of a town. It did have a couple of stoplights, a MacDonald's, and a few convenience stores with gas pumps, but little else other than one grade school, a high school, a broken-down tech factory that no longer operated, and a small clothing manufacturer that was apparently where most of the towns residents who didn't work at the school, the small police station, or tiny hospital, were employed.

Mac noticed there wasn't an overabundance of streetlights as he walked down the sidewalk next to Sam. It wasn't dark exactly, but it was dim. And it was cold. Not terribly, but since the local average was 50 degrees this time of year here at night and it was closer to thirty-five, Mac was regretting not putting on a sweatshirt under his leather jacket.

He could see his breath rising in plumes as they walked. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, realizing that Sam had done the same, also clearly ill-prepared for the cold. "Was this in the forecast?" Mac asked, thinking he didn't remember unseasonable cold being on tap and that if they were going to be there a few days, he might want to head back to Brownsville for some warmer gear.

Sam shook his head, glancing around, scanning the dark side streets, like he'd been doing since his age was still measured in single digits. "No … It got like this about three nights ago … when they found the first body."

"Wait," Mac turned toward Sam, halting their walk. "Body? Our report from Phoenix didn't say anything about any casualties. Just missing persons."

Sam nodded. "That's why Dean wanted to call Jack … the bodies turning up. We're in kind of a bad way, in terms of resources. There's no one we'd normally call for back-up available … And whatever this is, it's big."

"Because of the change in the weather?" Mac asked.

Sam raised an eyebrow. "Good instincts," he offered.

"Just collating data, so to speak." Mac swallowed hard and started walking again.

Sam's immediate impulse was to put a hand on his shoulder, like he would with Dean, but he didn't do it. Mac struck him as someone who liked his space. "How are you doing? With all this new data I mean?" he asked with genuine concern and understanding.

Mac shrugged, not looking Sam's way. "I'm fine."

"You realize that's Jack's favorite phrase when something's actually bothering the hell out of him and it's always a lie. Always has been. And he says it in pretty much the same tone you just used," Sam said with a bit of a challenge and a slight smile.

Mac glanced his way with a little grin. "Yeah, well, I really am. Fine, I mean."

"Just checking. Cas has taken a shine to you and I think between him and Jack, if I let you keel over, I'd be better off just facing down Lucifer without any backup."

He bit his lips and furrowed his brow as soon as the words were out of his mouth, because he heard Mac's breath catch and the younger man stopped walking again. The blond paused for a moment, ran his hands over his face and through his hair, shook his head like it needed clearing and then just started walking again.

Sam fell into step beside him. "Still okay?" he finally asked.

"Um … Sure." He was quiet for a moment. "I think … Probably."

The walked along in silence for another minute and then stepped into the well-lit parking lot of the local Lone Star market. Mac moved to open the door. "It's alright if you're not, you know."

Mac smiled in a way Jack would have recognized right away. It was his 'I'm maybe going to need to go run a half marathon but after that I'll be all good' expression, that usually meant he thought he'd be all good, but maybe wasn't. Sam recognized it too. He wore it pretty frequently himself. So, he didn't call the guy out.

"I'm dealing, Sam, but I appreciate the concern. Let's just get something to eat that isn't booze or grease and then maybe I can talk this through like a rational person." He chuckled, and it sounded very genuine. "Did I just say rational person to the guy who mentioned knowing Lucifer?"

Sam laughed a little too. "Yeah, ya did. But you may be surprised to find out that I'm a big fan of the rational myself, much to my brother's constant consternation."

Mac smirked and shook his head and put his hand on the door. That felt familiar.

"Oh, hey, they have a Subway in here!" He sounded pretty happy about that.

He heard Sam laugh again and glanced his way. "Only people like you and I could possibly be happy about mass produced wheat bread and turkey in a state famous for its grilling and barbeque."

"You forgot vegetables. And bottled water. I can't do another greasy burgers and beer meal this week, man. I like to treat my body like I want it around for a few years."

"I like to go with the whole 'body as a temple' approach myself," Sam agreed as they went inside.

"As opposed to a tent?" Mac laughed.

"Yeah. Apparently Jack and Dean have more in common than some related genes. There's the junk food, cheap beer or expensive bourbon, the getting surly when they're tired, and their obsession with action movies and pie."

"Dean's obsessed with pie, too, huh?"

"Obsessed would indicate something below a rehab worthy addiction."

They made their way over to the counter and ordered a couple of sandwiches, side salads, and bottled water, amused that though they'd ordered from separate clerks on opposite sides of the counter, they'd come away with the same thing.

Instead of carrying it back to the motel, which Sam thought was a bad idea (because nothing reminded you that you were sort of freaking out about discovering the things you thought were imaginary were actually real like trying to eat with an angel staring at you), they decided to eat in at the small dining area set aside for the restaurant part of the store.

They talked over their meal. Sam kept the conversation carefully geared toward just getting to know one another rather than allowing it to stray into the things that might text Mac's ability to cope. Cas had warned him it might smack him around physically for a while for a reason. Sam had seen people go right off the deep end when coming into contact with the life he and Dean found almost mundane at this point.

Mac looked more relaxed as he ate, and they chatted. It was clear that they had a lot in common. Mac noted that the biggest difference between them was that Sam had loved college, to the point he was disappointed that he'd had to kiss grad school goodbye, and he'd only liked the practical aspects of education, and the sort he could, and continued to, pursue on his own.

They laughed a good deal as they shared stories about both Jack and Dean, amused by the similarities in their collective personalities. Then Mac brought the conversation back around to the things Sam had been avoiding. Since the younger man no longer looked shaky or wiped out by his earlier experience, Sam decided to see where it went.

"So, Jack really didn't used to be afraid of all this …" Mac struggled for a word that felt sane. "Paranormal stuff?"

Sam's mouth curved in an almost-smile. "I don't remember Jack all that well from before he knew. I was a pretty little kid when he found out. First time we stayed with the Daltons was not too long after my mom died."

Mac's face changed. "Oh. I'm sorry for your loss, Sam."

Sam shrugged. "I was a baby. I don't really remember her. It's no big deal. Don't ever mention it around Dean though. He gets weird about it."

Mac nodded. "I can see why he would."

Sam raised a questioning eyebrow. "Yeah?"

Mac nodded, his expression a little sad. "I lost my mom when I was in kindergarten. You don't ever really … You don't get over that. I'll smell the perfume she used to wear and it's …" He swallowed. "It's just still hard sometimes."

"That's what Dean says. Sometimes it bothers me more that I don't feel that way," Sam said, not quite making eye contact with Mac this time.

"Were you at least close with your dad?" Mac asked.

Sam shrugged. "We fought all the time

"That I can totally relate to," Mac said ruefully. Sam raised a questioning eyebrow. This time Mac was the one who shrugged. "Haven't seen him since I was ten. He … he left."

Sam nodded. "My dad's been kind of in and out, too. Thought I'd gotten him back a few times …" He decided not to finish with real details of his and Dean's odd experiences relative to their father. Mac didn't really look ready yet and had been all too easy to steer back away from their less normal-world-based conversation. "But, I never know with him," was how he decided to finish.

Mac stuffed papers and napkins in the plastic sleeve his sandwich had come in. "On that happy note," he said, starting to rise, "What do you day we take a page out of Jack and Dean's book, buy some beer, head back to the motel and maybe pretend life is normal for a couple of hours in front of that ancient CRT they call a TV?"

"Sounds like a solution you've used before," Sam observed.

Mac grinned. "Jack and I once watched the entire _Die Hard_ franchise on a buddy's laptop in a barracks in Afghanistan with a jug of wine one of the guys had fermented under his bunk. The 'let's drink and watch TV' solution goes so far back in my relationship with Jack, it's what we do almost every time we get a couple of days off if things are going rough."

Sam got up as well, laughing just a little. "I think Dean and I have had our own version of that for a pretty long time, too. Although Jack and Dean may be hard to convince if they've gotten into Hunter mode while we've been gone."

"Is Hunters what you guys call yourself?"

"Everyone in the life calls themselves that," Sam replied and wished he hadn't when Mac put a hand on the table like the revelation that there was more than an isolated duo of distant Dalton relations who knew this was real had made him dizzy. He was about to apologize, ask Mac if he was okay again, but the look his slightly younger dinner companion gave told him that asking after him was certainly not going to enhance their relationship at this point.

"So, if they don't want to," Mac said after steadying himself for a second and then heading toward the garbage can to toss his stuff, "We'll just use the room Jack and I already had booked here. It's a couple of door down from you guys."

Sam shook his head and went over to eye the beer cooler. "I think they're probably going to want us to stick together until we figure out who or what this is."

"So, I fly all the way to Texas, find out the boogey man is real, and my reward for not having a heart attack is going to be a bedroll on the floor of your crappy motel room?"

Sam grinned. Mac's tone was so close to home it was like a sly mirror; sarcastic, a little longsuffering, somewhat amused, totally annoyed, and still prepared to just do what needed doing. "Tell you what. You can have my bed. My feet hang off anyway."

Mac grinned as he reached past Sam for a twelve pack of a beer he knew Jack preferred from their last trip here. It wasn't his usual for sure. Expensive and from a tiny brewery near Austin. Mac was surprised to find it in a chain store this far out in the middle of nowhere.

"Twelve pack, huh?" Sam asked with a smile.

"It's been a rough day, man."

Sam held out his hand for the box, clearly offering to pay since he was part of the cause of the hard day. He looked it over. "Family Business Brewing," he read. "This feels weirdly appropriate."

Mac agreed and followed Sam to the counter. Thinking better of just going back and gunning a bunch of high proof microbrew, Mac grabbed a few bottled of water and paid just after his tall companion. They headed back toward the motel, noticing that they'd talked for quite a while. The sky was fully dark and almost all the very small amount of traffic there had been had ceased.

Sam was hitting the button for the crosswalk at the t-intersection the block up from the motel when there was a thud behind him, a crunch of plastic, and the glug glug of water running out of a container. He spun around, not sure what he would find, but it was just Mac, standing there. Instead of picking up the water he'd dropped, he was staring at the intersection.

"Mac," Sam began. Mac didn't even blink. "Mac, are you okay?"

Mac didn't respond, just took a slow, almost shuffling step toward the blinking traffic light. Feeling the hair on the back of his neck raise in an all too familiar sensation, Sam looked toward where Mac's eyes were fixed.

Standing in the middle of the street was a woman, dressed in white, with long flowing dark hair blowing around her in a breeze that didn't exist for them, beckoning to the blond with both graceful, pale arms. Her hair obscured her face, but Sam got the sense that she was talking, calling out, only he couldn't hear it.

"Mac!" he said, louder, and a lot sharper.

Mac frowned and took another shuffling step forward, but it was clear that he didn't want to. It looked like something was pulling him and that he was fighting with all his might to stay right where he was, or maybe even run the other way, but since the fight was going on in his head, Sam couldn't hear that either.

A muffled sort of protesting sound passed Mac's lips and though his foot started to move forward again, he wrenched it back and fell over on the dusty sidewalk. Sam's attention was drawn to Mac for a split second as he assessed whether he'd fallen on his own or if he'd gone down because of something else unseen passing between him and the figure in the intersection. Satisfied he'd just taken a spill, Sam turned back to the street. There was nothing there but a fait mist that quickly dissipated in the light and almost pleasant winter breeze.

Sam crouched down next to Mac, who was sitting on the ground, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Hey, Mac, you alright? You hurt, man?" Sam asked.

Mac took his hand away from his face. "I … I don't know … I think maybe I really did get a concussion in Kiev … My head is killing me all of a sudden."

"What was she saying to you?"

"She?" Mac frowned in confusion.

Sam nodded. "You don't remember seeing a figure that looked like a woman in the intersection?"

Mac shook his head and started trying to get to his feet. Sam stopped him. "Le'me up. I'm fine," he grumbled.

"Maybe. But take it slow. We just encountered something … It looks like something I've seen before, but I don't think that's what it was …" He trailed off for a moment. "Even if it was a Woman in … You don't want to run afoul of her. And honestly, I think this was something more powerful."

Mac swallowed hard. Sam heard it catch and he picked up the one water bottle that hadn't broken and unscrewed the cap, passing the bottle to Mac and watching with as the younger man drained it in several long gulps. "Thanks."

"You really don't remember?"

Mac shrugged. "It's like I want to, but I try and then … ow … It hurts my head."

"Okay," Sam said, like he'd made a decision. He stood, tossed the broken water bottles and Mac's empty into the nearby trash can since there wasn't one for recycling, then extended his hand to Mac, who took it and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. "Let's get back to the motel. We've got something to base more specific research on now. Maybe we can get somewhere."

Mac took a step and had to catch himself on the crosswalk sign. "Whoa. Not sure I'll be much good helping with the research. I feel like my brain got tossed in a blender."

"Cas'll help with that, I'm sure."

"He doesn't mind just doing that all the time?"

Sam picked the case of beer up off the ground. "Nah, he likes to help. Besides, he's going to want to see if your memories of whatever we saw are intact or if you can't remember because that thing did something to you. The way you went over, it might have."

Mac's eyes widened, a little horrified. "I don't want your friend to just read my mind … I …"

"Whatever it is, he already knows, Mac. Which means so does Dean. When he unscrambled your brain after the shock of seeing him … He knows everything about you back to before you were potty trained. And he likes you, so I guarantee he couldn't resist telling Dean." He took in Mac's expression. "We can keep a secret, man. We're a good security risk, okay?"

Mac smiled, with his lips at least. "Okay." He started walking, glancing at Sam occasionally. "What's with lugging the beer along. What if whatever you saw comes back? Don't you want to be prepared to fight or run?"

Sam chuckled. "I texted Dean we were bringing beer. I show up with out it and he's not gonna care what happened to us, he's just gonna call me bitch and give me a dead arm."

Mac shook his head, laughing a little himself, now that the weird memory induced headache was going away. "You are definitely related to the Daltons."

"Does Jack randomly call you a bitch and punch you?"

Sam raised his eyebrows; he couldn't picture Mac tolerating that, since Jack was his partner not his older brother, and Mac didn't actually look like a guy who took much shit off anybody. Besides, he clearly had a pretty good willful streak, because Sam was pretty sure he'd witness this guy break a thrall and that it was breaking the spell with tremendous force that knocked him on his ass.

"No, but he likes to tease. Told me before that getting me … how did he put it … Getting me riled up relaxes him."

"Daltons and Winchesters are definitely cut from the same cloth," Sam snorted. "Why do you put up with crap like that from him?" Sam was genuinely curious. If Dean wasn't family he'd have put a pillow over his head before either of them could legally drive.

"He's my partner," Mac shrugged.

"I barely tolerate that crap from my brother."

Mac shrugged again. Sam just gave a knowing little nod. So they were more than just partners, these guys were friends, like the once in a life time kind. And they'd served together. Sam's dad always swore that was a bond like brotherhood. And Shakespeare certainly seemed to think so.

Finally, when they approached the motel room, Sam said, "I get it." Mac thought he probably did. "Listen, when we go in there, let me explain what happened. Dean's probably gonna get a little intense about it and …"

"Dean's gonna get intense? You really must not know your cousin all that well … Jack's gonna freak out."

Sam smirked. "Because he's afraid of all this stuff."

"No, because it had a hold of me. You have never met anyone more over-protective in your entire life."

Sam was ready to argue that point, but Mac went on.

"He calls himself my bodyguard, even though he's not exactly that … He followed me to Paris when I was just taking a vacation one time because he was worried. Like he stalked me to Europe."

"Seriously?" Sam snickered a little as he handed Mac the case of beer and got out the key. "What did you do about that?"

"Told him off!" Mac said with just a little heat. Didn't matter that Jack had been right; it still bugged him a little when he thought of it.

"And how'd that go? Did he yell at you in the middle of Paris?"

Mac looked away. "No, he got mad and left … eventually."

As Sam turned the key, he said, "Well, you obviously patched things up. How'd that happen after crossing a boundary that big?"

"Jack did what he always does, stood by me when stuff got bad."

"Stuff?"

"Getting kidnapped and tortured stuff. He doesn't mean to hover, but he does it. Always."

Sam wrinkled his features in an expression of total understanding. Dean went to psychotic lengths to protect him all the time. Always had. Even when he let him fight it was because not fighting was more dangerous.

The first thing that happened when the went inside was Dean and Jack both demanded to know just where the hell their younger companions had been. Mac sat down on the bed with a resigned sigh as Sam explained.

After answering the rapid-fire questions of everyone else in the room, Mac had allowed Castiel to look at his thoughts. The memories were there under a heavy veil of magic that Cas had a hard time breaking through. When he finally recovered what Mac had seen, but not what he had heard because they couldn't get that to come back, Mac was left exhausted.

There was no changing, no complaining about the noise of everyone still talking in the room. Mac just kicked off his boots and shoved them under the bed, dropped his jacket on the floor, and curled onto his side, away from the table where everyone was sitting and talking.

Sam excused himself from the small group, picking up his laptop and taking it in to the bathroom, the only place with a door to block out everyone else talking, so he could begin researching what that entity might have been. Dean agreed it was unlikely to be a Woman in White based on what they'd seen so far of the case, but Sam wanted to be sure no stories in the area made that a possibility.

Cas had disappeared with out a word after helping Mac get rid of the residual headache and remember what had happened. Dean and Jack quietly talked at the table in the dimly lit hotel room for quite a while. As late night turned to extremely early morning, they stopped to listen to a groaning sleep-mumble from Mac.

"I won't go … Le'me go … No …" He twitched and frowned in his sleep, moaning softly after speaking.

Jack got up and went over to his nightmare-trapped partner. "Hey, bud, you're dreaming, it's alright, man."

Mac quieted, but the frown didn't leave his face.

Dean sat staring at Jack and his partner for a long moment.

Then, he looked at Jack very seriously. "I'm sorry, man."

"About what?" Jack frowned.

"Like Cas said … I never even considered that your partner might get dragged into this. Just found out where you worked, made a few guesses as to what that really meant, and made the call. Now he's in this thing's crosshairs … I just … I know what that feels like, and I'm sorry."

Jack nodded. "Anything happens to him, you sure as hell will be."

"Fair enough," Dean replied and stuck out his hand, like he was offering to shake. Jack took it. It was an old gesture he'd started with Dean when he was still a boy, when Jack himself had first found out all this was real. It meant 'I accept my part in this'.

Jack took his hand and offered, "Me, too, kid."


	5. Chapter 5

When Jack woke the next morning, he could hear Dean snoring above him. Jack had been perfectly happy to bunk on the floor with a bedroll, and Sam had offered to do the same. What it appeared Sam had actually done was pass out on top of his laptop and he was still there, getting keyboard print on one side of his face and likely drooling in to the components.

He didn't see Cas anywhere around, and while he'd been a little freaked out to meet an actual angel, the little fella had really grown on Jack in the short time since they'd met. If he hadn't already liked him, Jack figured he would have gotten there when Cas helped Mac remember most of what had happened and then healed the headache the remembering caused. He hadn't been able to help with how wrecked it had left Mac, but Jack figured the kid had to sleep sometime anyway, and Cas's magic seemed to induce that state pretty handily.

Jack pushed himself up to sitting and looked around. It took him a minute to process what was wrong with the picture. Once he did, he snapped, "Son of a bitch," loudly enough to rouse Sam from his computer-adjacent slumber.

Sam's head snapped up and Dean stirred, getting himself upright fairly quickly while Jack groaned getting to his feet from the floor. "What's up, 'cuz?" Dean asked, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

"Where the hell is Mac?" he growled, indicating the neatly made bed.

Sam got up, stretching and rubbing at the keyboard impressions on his cheek. He looked around. Mac's duffel bag was missing, and the bathroom door was closed. He gave Jack a long-suffering look. Mac was right, Jack was overprotective. Freaking out because a guy was in the bathroom was next level. Worse than Dean by far.

"Relax, Jack. He's probably in the shower."

Sam pointed toward the bench where Mac's bag had been sitting last night and the closed bathroom door. Jack relaxed fractionally. Sam always said he disliked pointing out the obvious. But then again, he did that with Dean a fair amount of the time, so it's not like it was out of his way. And it was very satisfying to see another person's shoulders lower just because you told them something you could easily deduce.

Sam was amused to note, as Jack strode across the room to bang on the bathroom door, that, like Dean, Jack slept in his boots. Sam wondered if that was a military thing Jack was trained into and that Dean had picked up from their dad, or if Jack had picked it up from John or Dean at some point in their history.

Dean and Sam shared a look, and Dean rolled his eyes. He didn't see his own over-protectiveness, but, man, did it ever drive him nuts in other people. It got in the way of the mission. Besides, even Sam had to admit, Dean had gotten a lot better the last couple of years, and even more so since … coming back.

Jack paid them no mind as he wrapped his knuckles on the door again, trying to hear if the water was running or anything. Having a run of the kid just passing out in shock, then having to let Castiel rummage around in that ginormous brain, made Jack more than average levels of twitchy.

"Mac, hey, Mac, buddy! You conked out on us last night! How you feelin' this morning, man? "

The only answer was a low, muffled groan. Jack widened his eyes at the Winchesters and both were by the door a moment later. "Hey, Mac!" Sam called out. "You alright?"

Nothing.

Dean tried, "Look, kid, I need to get in there. Like in an emergency sort of way. You almost finished?"

Jack glared at him.

Dean gave a little head shake. "Don't make it about you being worried and crowd the kid, Jack. He's had a rough day or so, right? If he feels like hell on top of it, he'll probably be a little edgy because of it. And we both know he looked a little green around the gills last night. Who wouldn't? An angel crawling through your brain, especially if you really don't want them there, ain't exactly all beer and skittles, you know?"

Jack nodded. Mac would probably be very 'walls up' this morning. In fact, less walls up and more buried in an underground end-of-the-world-proof bunker. When Mac didn't answer this time, Jack just shrugged at his cousins and said, a little louder than he probably needed to, "Mac, I'm comin' in!"

They found the door unlocked. Also, strange for Mac in a motel room, and even more than that, one where he was surrounded by people he didn't know in less than ideal circumstances.

At first glance, the bathroom appeared empty. The shower curtain was closed though, and Jack heard a sound from behind it. He pulled it back and instead of Mac, he found Castiel, asleep and mumbling to himself, propped up in the tub, still fully dressed down to his shoes and trench coat. His bright eyes opened, and he smiled.

"Good morning, Winchester Relative. How are you?"

Jack forced himself to speak evenly. Pissing off an angel before morning coffee seemed like a real bad idea. "I'd be better if I knew where my partner was."

"Ah," Cas replied, getting out of the tub with eerie agility. "You are looking for Angus MacGyver. He is gone," Cas replied simply.

"Gone?" Jack asked, his voice already rising. "What do you mean ' _gone_ '?!"

Cas tilted his head, like he was listening. "He is approximately three blocks from here. He is running very fast."

All Jack heard was 'running very fast' and his brain went straight for demon women with long pretty hair trying to eat his heart or his brain or something. Asking no more questions, Jack just bolted for the door, followed closely by the Winchesters. They were out beside Dean's car when a cheerful, but clearly out-of-breath voice called, "Hey, guys!"

The three looked up and Mac was jogging across the parking lot, in his running clothes, breath sending up plumes of steam in the cool morning air. He was sweaty, grinning, and carrying a large stack of newspapers. His grin faded when he saw the full helicopter parent look he was getting from Jack and the only slightly less intense one he was getting from Dean.

When he approached them, he moved to set the papers down on the hood of the car, wanting to catch his breath so he could explain.

"Hey!" Dean said sharply, annoyed because for a second he'd been worried about the kid, too. "We don't stack things on Baby. She ain't a shelf, kid."

Mac raised an eyebrow and tried, not terribly successfully not to smirk. "You call your car _Baby_?"

"What's wrong with that?" he asked indignantly.

Mac's smirk bled through more completely. "Nothing, man. Just wondering if it runs in the family. Jack calls his dad's old car ' _My Baby_ ' all the time."

Jack and Dean shared a look. "You still have your old man's GTO?"

"Damn right I do, kid."

Fist bumps were exchanged and for a minute Mac thought maybe he was off the hook. Then Jack turned back to him.

No such luck.

"What the hell were you thinking, taking off for a run on your own this morning?"

"I needed to blow off some steam. Besides, when I got up, I went online and found out I could get back issues of the local paper from the librar …"

"After what happened last night? Are you kidding me right now?" Jack and Dean said together, and Sam snorted a little laugh.

Both older men turned their attention away from Mac to glare at Sam.

"It's pretty obvious Mac's got a lot going on in his head at this point. Of course he wanted to go for a run. It's like when you want to go out and wax Baby or go drink too much and sing karaoke," he said, tipping his head toward Dean. "Or when I need to do a thousand sit ups after a bad night or …"

Mac had slid behind them and into the motel room, the door clicking shut behind him.

"God damn it," Jack growled. He gave Dean and Sam both a look. Then he followed Mac inside, expecting the Winchesters to be right behind him.

They both hesitated, looking at each other with raised eyebrows. "You ever think you'd see Jack Dalton look …"

"Like you when you used to get all weird about me being involved in this stuff, if it wasn't stuff you chose for me to be involved in?"

Dean smirked. "Yeah, like that." He punched his brother in the arm. "Bitch." Then he started following Jack inside.

"Jerk," Sam mumbled and stuffed his hands in his pockets as he headed inside behind his brother.

Sam felt an involuntary smile curve his lips when he walked in and heard the strident tone coming from his cousin. It was enough to remind him of Dean in the very early days of this strange winding road he and his brother were on.

"Whatever possessed you to …"

"Jack," Mac's smirk was a defensive one. "I don't think you should say _possessed_ around these guys so casually."

This time Dean couldn't help but laugh. "For somebody who turned whiter than an actual ghost when you found out all this shit is real, less than a whole day ago, you've adapted pretty fast there, Mac."

"I value adaptability. And, I don't know how successfully I'm doing it yet, but I'm trying."

"So what's with the newspapers?" Sam asked, before Jack could start another attempt at lecturing his partner and giving him the third degree, when Mac was obviously okay, and not interested in being lined out in front of people who were essentially strangers.

Mac had started to head toward the bathroom, as much in an effort to evade Jack yelling at him as to get cleaned up, but he turned back. "I woke up early and …"

"He means he didn't really sleep," Jack supplied, and Sam and Mac shared a look that was almost amused and was definitely a little exasperated.

"I slept, just … not … you know … all night." He shrugged. "Anyway, the local paper has a website. It's pretty crappy, not unlike the motel WiFi, but you can scroll through the last fifteen or so issues …"

"And you found something," Dean said, a real smile, not just a slightly amused or teasing one, crinkling his eyes at the edges.

Mac nodded. "I found a couple of somethings."

Jack had stopped looking pissed off and just sat down on the rumpled bed where Dean had been sleeping not too long ago. He realized it was still warm, although he felt like the time from when he'd realized Mac was gone until now felt like half a day at least.

He realized that maybe since the Murdoc incident he'd gotten a tiny bit overprotective. Okay, to be fair, he'd always taken the kid's safety awfully seriously, but that day … he'd been so sure he was going to lose the kid, and that it would have been because he'd selfishly stalked off in a huff even though he'd known Mac wasn't in a good place when they spoke …

Well, he'd promised himself that he would never leave Mac vulnerable like that again. Bodyguard meant all the time. All of it. But he'd also promised the kid to try to respect his boundaries, to not go overboard. Mac had made it very clear that he appreciated Jack's efforts, but he needed to know Jack realized he could take care of himself.

"What did you find, bud?" Jack asked as something of a peace offering for going from zero to helicopter parent in less time that it took for someone else to pull on a pair of boots.

Mac picked up the newspapers of the nearby table and set them down on the bed next to Jack, glancing at the Winchesters as he did so. "I bookmarked the site on the tablet … There were some traffic cam pictures and one really blurry photo from someone in a car … People have seen the woman we saw a few times lately."

"At that intersection?" Sam asked, coming over and sitting on the other side of the stack of newspapers, picking one up, almost as if he already knew what Mac was thinking.

"Twice," Mac nodded. "But two other times were at other locations. All near here though." He shifted slightly, pulling absently at his sweaty running shirt. "But the site is garbage, like I said. I saw they keep back issues at their offices and I figured it couldn't hurt to go grab some."

"So we could sift through them for other sightings and see if we see some kind of pattern," Sam said.

Mac immediately nodded. "Yeah. I mean, that thing wasn't human, but that's no reason not to apply the same investigative techniques we'd use if we were gathering information on suspicious human activity. Intel is intel."

Jack was nodding thoughtfully, rubbing the backs of his knuckles along the stubble on his jaw like he did when he was trying to make a leap based on intel they didn't even have yet. It used to drive Mac crazy. The hell of it was, Jack was often right when he got like that. Jack looked to Dean, hoping the experienced Hunter would either agree or offer another plan before Mac decided to wander off on his own again.

"But if it's just a … whadayacallit … A woman in white? Then why do all this research? We could just hit up the police files for a likely candidate and go find her and do whatever it is you guys do to get rid of a ... one of those," Jack said, just trying to get his head in the game.

Dean was about to answer, when Mac jumped in. "You'd burn her bones. But I don't think this is a woman in white. The MO is wrong."

All three cousins looked surprised, especially Sam and Dean. Less than a day ago, this guy didn't know any of this stuff even existed, passed out when he realized it was true, and now he was talking like a seasoned Hunter. As the least shocked by Mac's newly demonstrated knowledge (he was used to Mac picking things up quickly), Jack was the one to ask, "What makes you say that, Mac?"

Mac sat down on the neatly made bed where he'd slept and Dean sat down next to him so the four of them were more or less facing each other to talk this out. "First of all, the victims … They haven't disappeared without a trace, right? Some of them have turned up dead. Exsanguinated, correct?"

Sam nodded. "Yeah, that's true."

"Aw, Sammy, you two must've taken the same annoying English class at some point. He likes the big words, too."

"I've been telling you to stop calling me Sammy for years now, Dean. How hard am I gonna have to hit you for you to finally knock it off."

"You don't need to hit me, Sammy. Just start lookin' like a grown up."

Sam looked to Mac for a sympathetic ear. "You believe the crap I have to put up with?"

Mac shook his head. "My first name is Angus, and Jack uses it whenever I've pissed him off. Actually, it's usually whenever I've done something he thinks is risky and he wants me to hear how disapproving he is." Mac raised his hands in an 'I get you' gesture. "I'm not saying Sammy is any better than Angus if you don't like it, just that I doubt either of them will stop.

Sam chuckled. "They won't. I'm sure of it. What else makes you think it's something else, other than the victims being drained of blood?" he asked.

Mac knew Sam phrased it that way in case either Dean or Jack weren't actually aware of the term exsanguinate. Sam figured Dean should be by now, but he had the most stubborn refusal to acknowledge new vocabulary … or new … well, a lot of things. Seemed like Jack maybe had a little streak of that, too.

"I'm not exactly someone they'd zero in on … I mean … I haven't ever … You know … cheated on someone." He shrugged, almost blushing.

Sam shook his head. "That's not necessarily a hard and fast rule though. I was attacked by one once, and I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time … By which I mean hunting her so I could burn her bones. I hadn't ever been unfaithful or seriously broken trust with anyone at the time either."

Mac didn't comment on the phrase _at the time_. He didn't want to know if Sam had cheated on a girlfriend or broken any kind of vow in the time since then, especially because he saw the shadow pass over Dean's face that said he thought maybe his little brother had broken trust with him at some point.

"See, now, Sammy, I've been thinkin' about that," Dean commented.

 _Oh, boy, here we go_ , Mac thought.

"What about Rebecca Winters and Mya Todd when you were in third grade? Like maybe our Ms. Welch had a legitimate beef with you."

"Jerk," Sam grumbled. "It's not cheating if you're a little kid and you just want to hold hands with two different pretty girls who don't think being as tall as your big brother makes you a mutant. Or if it does, it's the comic book hero kind."

Mac was nodding thoughtfully, looking from Dean back to Sam again. "That might have been enough," he agreed. "But even in that case, wouldn't this one have gone after Sam again, too?" He shifted a little uncomfortably again. "I just don't think I'm the target demographic for a woman in white."

"You really that much of a Boy Scout?" Dean asked with a smirk.

"He got kicked out of the Scouts," Jack replied before Mac could say anything.

"See Dean, it is possible to get kicked out without telling your troupe that your father is a demon hunter. I never said anything about the family business!"

Sam was vaguely indignant, but Mac smiled. Nice to know he wasn't the only one.

Before a family feud broke out, Jack decided he should intervene in the conversation and redirect it.

"You find all this on the internet, kid?" Jack asked.

Mac shrugged again. Riley and Boze were known on the team to be better at online research, but he spent a good amount of his free time poking around the web for cool stuff, so he wasn't a novice himself.

"But I ran out of good search results, so I figured we'd go old-school and see what we could turn up that way."

"Good thinkin', kid," Dean said, slapping him on the shoulder. "Let's sift through these and see what we find."

Mac stood, thinking he was both sweaty from the exertion of his run, but also chilled by the ambient temperature outside. "If it's all the same to you guys, I'm gonna go grab a shower before I start."

The other three men nodded distractedly and began divvying up the stack of newspapers. Mac had just closed the bathroom door, when Sam asked, "Hey, where the hell did Cas go?"

A shout of surprise cut through any reply Dean or Jack might have formulated. Dean just smirked, "From the sounds of it? I'm guessing back to nap in the bathtub."

A not exactly whispered curse was heard through the door. Then the door opened, and Mac stood there holding it open, obviously extremely glad he'd only gotten into his morning shower and shave routine as far as peeling off his shirt.

"I am sorry, Angus MacGyver. I didn't not mean to startle you. I only meant to rest while everyone was looking for you."

Mac's expression softened a little. Maybe it would be nice to have someone who understood people even less than he usually did. "Don't worry about it. But no more appearing in the bathroom … And please, call me Mac."

Without waiting for a reply, Mac closed the door and everyone heard the shower turn on a moment later.

"I am glad you found your friend and that he returned from his morning exercise safely."

"You knew he was just out for a run?" Jack's voice held a hard, dangerous note.

Cas didn't seem to pick up on the warning. "Yes, I believe I told you he was running quite rapidly."

Dean flicked his eyes to Jack's and gave a spare shake of his head. Jack wanted to blow his top, but Cas had just been being literal, and maybe a little careless about speaking in complete thoughts and counting on everyone to just catch up on their own. Jeez, that was a familiar experience. How could he be mad at that?

"It's fine, Cas."

"I am relieved. I was afraid you might do something rash."

"I am never rash," Jack huffed.

"You forget, Jack Dalton, that I can read your mind." Cas smiled then, just a bit. "Also, you and Dean are very much alike. He is never _not_ rash."

"Fair enough, Cas." Dean and Jack traded smirks.

Dean asked, "Are you hanging around because you need something from us, or are you hanging around because there's some Big Bad you don't want to tell us about, but you want to protect us from?"

Cas looked confused. "You called to me, Dean."

"Oh, damn. Yeah, I did. I just needed you to help us make Mac believe. You can go do whatever you need to."

Cas blinked out of the room in less than no time.

Jack blinked rapidly and shook his head. "You ever get used to the guy just comin' and goin' like that."

Sam shrugged. "I don't even think about it now." He started leafing through a paper. "Let's get to work on these. The sooner we know what we're dealing with, the faster you guys get back to your normal lives."

There was something unmistakably bitter when Sam said the words 'normal lives' but Jack let it pass and got to work himself. When Mac came out of the bathroom after a long shower, in which he'd managed to get prune fingers because he was staring off into space, Jack and the Winchesters were gathered around the little table, looking at pictures they'd taken out of the papers.

Mac wedged himself between Jack and Dean, who were crowding the table, so he could see. "Noticed anything yet?"

Sam glanced at him. "Other than these are all taken late at night or during the early morning hours, not much."

Mac just nodded and leaned forward, moving pictures around and frowning. Jack and Dean backed off. Dean, because he knew the look on Mac's face all too well. It was the one Sammy got when he was researching, and Jack because he knew just getting out of the way of what his partner was trying to do was the quickest way of getting home and getting Mac out of danger from whatever this thing was.

"Hmmm," Mac said. It was a 'I've got a conclusion' sound rather than a questioning one.

"What is it, Mac?" Sam asked. After looking at the arrangement of pictures Mac had shifted around, he thought he had half an idea. Or half of a half anyway.

"They're all at … Hang on." He leaned closer to the grainiest of the pictures. "Yeah, they're all at intersections of some kind. Look …"

Mac quickly and methodically pointed out where all of these sightings had taken place at various types of intersections.

Dean sighed. "I wish I thought this was worth our time, kid, but look … This one doesn't follow that pattern." He pulled one of the pictures toward them.

Mac squinted at the picture.

"Sure it does. All this overgrowth hides an old road of some kind ... Here."

They were looking at him like he was hallucinating. He pointed then, putting his finger right on what he was talking out.

"You see here? The trees are different … Younger. This spot doesn't look it anymore, but at some point, it must have been a crossroad."

"Son of a bitch!" Dean growled.

Sam's mouth twitched his agreement.

"What is it?" Jack asked. Mac stayed quiet, studying to faces of the other two men.

"We're gonna need to go get some things for a summoning … That rat bastard," Dean cursed a few more times under his breath just for good measure.

"If this thing is a crossroads demon of some kind, our … what's a good word for this, Dean?" Sam asked.

Dean just swore again. "Son of a bitch."


	6. Chapter 6

Mac spent the day on his tablet and leafing through the newspapers he brought back. Sam and Dean were in and out, running around to get things they needed for the … whatever the hell it was they wanted to do later … okay, fine … for the summoning. They wanted to _summon a demon_.

Mac had eaten what felt like half a bottle of Advil when the other guys weren't looking and was resting his head against his hand rereading a paragraph for about the fifth time because the headache he'd gotten from staring at this stuff all day and thinking about things like 'summoning' and 'demon' as real was epic.

The second one also made him feel like he'd swallowed a block of frozen soda full of Poprocks.

Jack was doing his level best to help out Sam and Dean, but he didn't leave with them. Instead he cleaned the Winchesters' messy hotel room, organized Mac's papers, called the office to check in, and then stretched out on the bed pretending to sleep. Finally, Mac had enough.

"You can stop pretending to nap, Jack," he said without looking up from what he was doing.

He heard Jack sigh.

"Maybe I was napping and you just woke me up to snatch my head off."

Mac shook his head with a sigh of his own. "You haven't dozed off even once. I know this because for one, when you're really asleep, you snore, and for another you keep looking at me. I see you out of the corner of my eye every time you do it … which is a lot … and seems kind of obsessive … and it's creeping me out."

Jack sat up. "You sure it's not that you're just creeped out about … You know …"

Mac put down the paper he was looking at and turned in his seat to face Jack. "Of course I'm creeped out by all this. It's … a lot. Too much. But it exists so … There's no point in dwelling on it," he said with his characteristic assurance.

Jack could picture yet another box in Mac's mind, wrapped up in duct tape, being tossed into a deep well. Thing was, and he'd tried to tell Mac before, the problem with just dumping things you didn't want to deal with was that eventually the box decayed and … Sarah had once made some metaphor about Pandora to get Jack to talk to a real therapist, but he couldn't remember it now, so it was no good to him.

Instead of trying to get Mac to deal with what he must be feeling Jack just said, "You're probably right, bud." Mac cocked and eyebrow at him, but didn't say anything. Jack took that as a cue that Mac was okay to keep talking. "You find anything?"

Mac nodded vaguely, glancing at the computer for a moment and shuffling the papers around again. "There's any number of things in mythology that behave the way … whatever that thing was … did. So, it's not like I've narrowed the field yet."

Jack got up and joined Mac at the table. Mac shifted in his seat almost like he was uncomfortable with the proximity. Jack frowned. "You doin' okay, bud?"

Mac rubbed his forehead and then ran the hand through his hair, unaware that it made him look like he just woke up, or not caring if he did know it. "I … I've been researching demons, demonology, exorcism, all that sort of thing, more than anything," he said, almost like he was admitting to a crime.

"Okay," Jack said, nodding perfectly agreeably. "But that doesn't answer my question."

"I'm fine. I already told you."

"Really?" Jack raised an eyebrow.

Mac got up, almost angrily and started pacing the small motel room.

Jack didn't move, but his eyes tracked Mac's every move. He shouldn't have pushed, but he knew all too well that emotionally unbalanced was a good way to invite possession and if they were really going to go summon a demon, he didn't care what kind of precautions his cousins thought they were taking, he wasn't about to see Mac vulnerable to that sort of experience if he could help it.

His partner was still having some pretty terrible nightmares from the Murdoc incident and possession went well beyond the violation of kidnapping and even torture. He couldn't even contemplate what that would do to Mac.

Finally, Mac threw his hands up in the air in total frustration. "What do you want to hear, Jack? That I'm not okay? Not even a little? That I've felt like my brain is caught in a blender since we walked into that filthy dive bar? That I've got the worst headache of my life and it's nothing I can do anything about, because I know it isn't even physical? Fine! You got it! I'm so far from okay, I don't even know what zip code I'm in!"

Suddenly Mac sunk down onto the foot of the bed, rested his elbows on his knees, and put his head in his hands.

"How do you even live with knowing all this is real? How do you even …" he trailed off, shaking his head, but not lifting it.

Jack got up and went over to his partner. He nudged Mac, who scooted over to make room, but still didn't change his position much. Carefully, allowing him plenty of time to shrug him off or tell him not to, Jack put an arm around Mac's shoulders.

"Kid, you've seen how I deal with it. Badly. I'm scared shitless half the time. I think once of the reasons I went Delta, said yes to CIA, and then to DXS was … Well, if I'd done anything different, I might have a lot of time on my hands. Time to think. And man, oh man, thinking has been about my least favorite thing to do since I found all this stuff out. Moving, doing, those are okay. But knowing all this … Heaven … Hell … It's … It's hard. I don't know how Sam and Dean do it and still function like they do, because for them, it's their whole lives."

Mac nodded, now rubbing his temples.

"And if you want to get out of here, that's okay, man. I'll drive you back to Brownsville and put you on a plane home. I've got to help them out, because I promised if they ever needed me, I would. But you didn't, and they shouldn't have involved you. I so pissed off that they did, I want to relieve those guys of a few of their teeth. Well, Dean anyway. After that thing got ahold of you last night, I wanted to take you to the airport then, but I also know how you are and if I just bossed you around you'd get all stubborn and refuse to leave. So, I'm askin' instead. You wanna go home, kid?"

Mac took his hands away from his face and sat of straight, turning to look at Jack. "No. No, I'll stay."

"You don't have to, bud … This is dangerous and …"

"Wookie life debt, Jack," Mac said, his lips curving into a real, fond smile.

"Just because I swore one to you … You've saved my life more damned times than I can …"

"So've you. Two-way street, Big Guy. I'm not leaving you here." He sighed. "I'll be okay. I've got to learn to live with it one way or the other anyway."

Jack was going to say something else, when the door just banged open. Both he and Mac jumped. Neither one of them had heard the key hit the lock.

"Alright, ladies. Time to get the show on the road!" Dean said, in what Mac thought was entirely too loud a voice.

Sam's expression said he agreed with Mac, when the youngest member of the group said, "Do you have to yell?"

"I'm not yellin'!" Dean said defensively, and not much more quietly. "But we need to get a move on."

Jack frowned. "I thought we weren't heading out to the crossroad spot you guys picked until after dark."

"We're not," Sam supplied, throwing Dean a look. "But we have some things we need to do before we go."

He looked almost reluctant to explain himself further.

"I thought you guys didn't want us along until you had everything you need," Mac said, raising an eyebrow with an expression that was almost a challenge.

"We didn't. We have everything we need. But, you guys don't."

"Spit it out Dean," Jack snapped, starting to lose patience with his cousin.

"We scoped out a good clean place to take you guys." Dean undid one of his shirt buttons and pulled his collar open. "You need a little preventative body modification before we go out there."

"Huh?" Jack and Mac said at the same time, squinting at the symbol Dean had revealed high on the left side of his chest.

"Anti-possession tattoo," Sam answered. "It's the only foolproof protection against demons that we've found."

Mac snorted derisively. "I am _not_ getting a tattoo."

"You sure as hell are," Dean said with a little heat. He knew how pissed Jack was about him involving his younger partner and he wasn't going to be responsible for some asshole demon wearing the kid like a sock puppet. And he didn't trust anything they could get by summoning, especially based on their plan. Besides, if the thing that had set its sights on the kid last night really was a demon, they needed assurance that it couldn't get hold of him again. "It's the safest thing …"

Mac shook his head. "I'm not doing something permanent to my body for this. That's crazy."

Jack laughed. "Mac feels pretty strongly about ink. Our whole squad tried to convince him to get matching ones with us back in the day and he was havin' none of it."

Mac laughed a little too at the memory. Even way too much booze into a night on leave it had still seemed like a terrible idea. "I'm still having none of it," he said definitively.

Dean stood in front of him then, face contorted into an expression that said he was both irritated but also worried. Sam had to cover up a smile. That face was way too familiar. "Listen, Mac, I appreciate this whole Boy Scout look you've got goin' I do. And I can even appreciate not wanting to get inked because, well, it hurts, and I thought it was kinda nasty."

Sam interrupted. "It's doesn't really hurt that much."

"But it is nasty," Dean said, throwing his brother a glare. "It's just, it's really the only reliable way to stay safe dealing with demons."

"Safe?" Mac asked, his expression starting to be more contemplative and less stubborn.

"From possession, like we said," Dean answered, but he managed to not sound quite as irritated or pushy, reminding himself that this was all very new to Mac, and his brain was filled with practical science, not philosophy or religion. Even Jack, who'd been raised to believe in the next life had struggled and Mac, well, Mac seemed like he believed in things like math. Which didn't actually require belief.

Mac frowned, thinking. "Is it the symbol itself, or is there something about it being embedded in your skin?"

Sam answered, sitting down on the corner of the other bed. "It's the symbol, but … the tattoo means it can't be broken, or snatched away, or lost, or …"

"A tattoo could be burned off, scarred into broken lines, the ink could bleed … It's not foolproof," Mac pointed out. Both the Winchesters looked uncomfortable. They hadn't necessarily looked at it like that.

Jack spoke again, a hand on Mac's shoulder. "Seems like it might be a good idea though, if you're really going to stay here, bud. Besides, chicks love tattoos."

Mac shook his head. "I don't like the idea of doing anything I can't get rid of, especially since we don't necessarily have any evidence that it's foolproof."

Sam was the one to speak again. "It's like a vaccine. Sure, it might not be a hundred percent effective for everyone all the time, but the best evidence we have says they work, right?"

"Yeah?" Mac said, both agreeing and questioning the metaphor all at the same time.

"So just because you might be the tiny part of the population a particular vaccine might not work on, you gonna skip one?"

Mac smiled and shook his head. "Obviously not, but … this isn't even remotely scientific." Sam looked prepared to take up the effort to convince him, but Mac's expression brightened. "For now, how about just a real heavy-duty skin staining permanent ink, while I think it over?" He was looking around the room. "I could burn some paper to make lampblack … The gas station has eggs and honey … I bet that arts and crafts store up the street has gum Arabic; I saw calligraphy supplies in the window when we walked by …"

"Or we could just use this Sharpie," Dean said with a little shake of his head, tossing the pen to Mac from inside his jacket pocket.

"Perfect!" Mac said with a grin.

"You knew off the top of your head how to make homemade permanent ink?" Sam asked with a little disbelief in his voice.

"This guy could DIY his way to Mars," Jack replied with no small measure of pride.

"Does it matter where we draw it?" Jack asked.

"Over your heart is supposed to be the best place," Dean answered. He took the marker back from Mac and handed it to Sam. "You're the artist in the family, kid."

Sam shrugged. "Who wants to go first?"

Mac saw the look Jack was giving him. His partner wouldn't be comfortable until there was at least temporary insurance against some demon … Ugh. He couldn't even finish the thought. He sighed and pulled his t-shirt off over his head. Jack got up and moved over to the other bed to sit and Sam sat down next to Mac, uncapping the marker.

"What the hell happened to you, man?" he asked, indicating the scar on Mac's chest.

Mac gave a little shake of his head. "I got shot."

"Yeah, I can see that," Sam replied, "Missed your heart by …"

"Not by much," Mac finished for him. "If this little art project works maybe I will think about a tattoo. Over that."

"I can imagine you wouldn't want a reminder of almost getting taken out every time you take a shower, Mac," Sam said with some sympathy as he started to draw the image of the protection symbol over the scar.

"Especially since his ex is responsible," Jack said, frowning again at the reminder of Lake Como, and even more at the reminder of how easily Mac had almost let Nikki back into his life during the Chrysalis crisis. Fortunately, nothing ever seemed to happen after that. Which Jack was grateful for. He didn't trust Nikki, and if he was honest, he never really had.

Dean smirked and sat down next to Jack. "You almost got ganked by an ex? And you lived to tell the tale. That's kinda badass, kid."

Mac wanted to laugh, but stepped on the urge. He didn't want to screw up Sam's work. "Ganked?"

"Yeah. What?" Dean asked.

"That's not even a word."

"Sure it is, Mac. Jack used your name as a verb like three times last night while you were out cold, so I figure you're open minded about the English language."

"Damn it, Jack, what have I said about that?" Mac said with a suppressed sigh.


	7. Chapter 7

They rode along in the dark. Sam and Dean in the front seat, and Mac and Jack in the back. Everyone else was talking, but Mac was once again quiet. It seemed odd to the Winchesters and Sam kept casting concerned glances over his shoulder. They both figured a guy as talkative as Jack would have an equally chatty partner, especially since the two were obviously close.

But Jack wasn't worried. Not really. Okay … not much.

Mac was naturally kind of a quiet guy.

Well, not always. He could talk Jack's ear off sometimes, but around new people Mac could be reticent, almost shy unless he was actively doing something. Jack told himself that's all this was, not that Mac was still freaking out. After his brief outburst before the other guys got back, Mac had been calm, back to his usual problem-focused, logical demeanor.

Then Jack saw him reach up and massage his forehead again. It wasn't a typical headache gesture, but more the one he'd been making off and on since that parking lot when Sam handed him his phone with the picture of an angel's shadow. The one that said what was in Mac's head didn't really fit into it.

Jack tried to bite his tongue, but completely independent of his wishes he heard the rest of his mouth ignore him. "Mac, bud, you okay?"

Mac just glanced at him ad shrugged. "Yeah, I'm fine," he said quietly. Then he turned very pointedly back toward the window, dropping his hands to his lap and fidgeting instead of rubbing his head.

This went on for several minutes before Mac sighed heavily. Jack was about to push a little harder, maybe even bring up flying back to LA again. He drew in his breath to speak.

"Hullo, Angus."

"Jesus!" Mac exclaimed, jumping as his head snapped toward the middle seat where Castiel materialized without so much as a whisper of sound.

"I am sorry," Castiel said, sounding like he meant it. "I was drawn back here by your distress." The angel looked around the car for a moment, giving Sam and Dean reproving looks in the mirror. "I told you he was not done suffering, as his mind could not assimilate this all at once. One of you should have called me to help Angus."

The moments it took for that little speech was all Mac needed to slow his breathing and get himself to sound perfectly normal. "I thought I asked you not to call me that."

Jack, trying to break the tension (that was part of his role with Mac, after all), said. "Yeah, he doesn't like to be called Angus. No one likes to be named after an item on the menu at Carl Jrs."

Cas shook his head. "He does not like to be called Angus because that is what his mother called him. When people call him Angus, it makes him miss her terribly."

Mac sucked in his breath. "Don't."

He didn't need to say more. The other humans in the car looked everywhere but at Mac.

Castiel looked directly at him. His eyes compassionate and searching. "I am sorry … Mac."

"Thank you," he replied, voice tight.

The angel's eyes narrowed and his expression was almost a frown. "You are angry with me."

"No, I'm n … You know what … Being around someone who can read minds is really irritating," Mac grumped.

"You got that right," Dean chimed in from the front seat.

Sam decided not to pile on just to tease Cas. "Mac, he really is just trying to help. Social conventions are kind of lost on Cas."

"Aw, Mac, see, you guys should get along great," Jack said, still determined to lighten his partner up a bit.

"Screw you," Mac said in return, but it was with a half-smile that made Jack feel better.

"We are nearly at our destination," Cas said, eyes still boring into Mac's, making it clear that he was intent on helping and also that he had officially invited himself along on this venture. "Will you allow me to clear your head again?"

Mac looked back at him for a long moment. "I guess," he finally said with a shrug.

0-0-0

By the time they pulled off onto the gravelly shoulder of the road about ten minutes later, Mac felt reasonably clear headed again. They'd gone well outside town. The Rio Grande was visible in the near distance and when they stepped out of the car to look around at this almost untraveled intersection, they could hear the water flowing, swollen with recent unseasonable rain and snow.

Mac leaned against the hood of the car with his hands in the pockets of his coat. Cas looked at Sam and Dean preparing for the ritual for a moment, glanced at Jack and tipped his chin toward the Winchesters, and when Jack moved off to assist with what they were doing (which appeared to be burying a box in the middle of the road for some reason), Cas leaned against the car, too.

He waited for a moment in silent contemplation of his young human companion. The he spoke softly. "I do not believe you are ready for more newness at the moment, Mac."

Mac's eyes flicked to Cas, then returned to watch the preparations for the ritual. Sam was drawing a symbol on the ground with what looked like powdered chalk. Jack was lighting a variety of candles, and was quietly asking his cousins for direction. Dean was putting some things into a bowl in the middle of the symbol and then flipping through a large, worn, leather-bound book.

Finally, Mac looked at Cas again. He was still quietly freaking out that this guy was an angel, but there was also something comforting about his presence. He seemed genuinely concerned and like he really wanted to be of some help. It was a feeling that Mac had only ever really found common around Jack, or Bozer until more recently. Riley had joined the ranks of people he didn't think asked after him for selfish reasons. But most other people, their concern always felt at least a little self-serving.

Mac offered a small smile. "I don't believe I have much choice, Cas."

"Because you will not leave your partner to face whatever this is alone."

Mac nodded. "That's how we do things, yeah. Jack is …"

"Family," Cas said with a nod.

"Yeah. Yeah, he is."

"You two are going to be as troublesome as the Winchesters. I can already tell."

Mac laughed softly. "You make that sound like both an insult and a compliment at the same time."

"Yes," Cas agreed. The he cocked his head, listening to what the other men were saying. They were too far away from Mac to hear clearly. Cas put a hand on his shoulder. "They are ready. The ritual is more powerful with energy at all compass points."

Mac nodded. "Okay."

He walked out into the middle of the crossroads, hands still in his pockets.

Jack was making helicopter face. "Doin' okay, bud."

Mac nodded. "Where do you need me?"

Dean tilted his head toward the red candle on the ground. "Take the South, that's fire. Seems like a good element for a bomb expert."

Mac smiled. "That's probably true."

Dean ordered the other guys around too. "Jack you take North, that's Earth. Sam, oh, good, you've got Water in the West. Cas would you ..?"

"Yes, Dean. I will be Air for your spell."

When everyone was in position, Dean stood in the center, facing the sigil drawn on the ground and the bowl of fruits and other items in the middle of it. He spoke in a low, focused voice. Mac only caught a few words. " _Et ad congredandum … eos coram me …_ "

There was a soft sound and then an amused, almost familiar voice. "Hello, boys."

There was a yelp of surprise and Mac backed away from the circle, mouth working like he couldn't quite find words, but his brain was maybe talking a blue streak anyway.

"Mac!" Jack exclaimed in surprise, breaking from his spot in the circle and heading for his partner. "What is it?" He could see his partner staring with wide eyes at the being that just appeared in the middle of the circle, but could not see the creature's face. Jack was worried it was wearing its demon form instead of a human guise.

Mac gasped, steadying himself to answer Jack. "Z … Zito," he finally forced out.

When Jack caught a look at the smirking man in the neat brown pinstriped suit, he felt his own breath draw in sharply. Then he just stood shoulder to shoulder with Mac as the creature's eyes settled on them.

"Well, hello. He stepped around Dean and toward Mac and Jack. "To what do I own the pleasure of being summoned into the middle of nowhere by the Winchesters and their … Is 'fresh meat' offensive to you boys?" He directed the question at Mac and Jack.

Dean got between them again and Sam stepped next to his brother. "Crowley," Dean growled. "We need to talk to you."

"In a minute. You're the least interesting person at this crossroad right now, Squirrel. I like the one that thinks I want to kill him."

Sam tried next, stepping between Crowley and the others, with a hard glare. "Your people have already hassled Mac enough. That's why we called you."

Crowley made a disinterested little frown. "I don't have any people in this area, Moose. No one from Hell anywhere on the map here at the moment. Until you called _me_ , that is."

Even the voice was the same. The expressions. The amused eyes that held nothing but the promise of pain for his own entertainment. And he was clearly laughing at them behind his few words. Suddenly that kind of pissed Mac off.

"Who are you?" he demanded, stepping away from Jack and a little closer to the newcomer.

"I'm the King of Hell." His smirk became a little more smug. "I heard the boys call you Mac. I don't think that suits you. Pretty boy like you ... I think I'll call you … Hollywood," he said with an oily almost intimacy.

Mac took a step back. Picking long ago nicknames out of his head was not okay. "My name is Angus MacGyver. I like to be called Mac. But only my closest friends, people I would have happily died for, have ever called me Hollywood. So, you don't get to."

There was an icy confidence that Jack was familiar with Mac using when they encountered serious bad guys. It was his tone that told Jack he was totally in the zone and nothing, not a bullet wound, a bomb, or fifty more bad guys showing up was going to shake his focus. Jack noticed Dean smile approvingly at his partner and Sam glance at Crowley with a satisfied expression.

"Oh, Hollywood," Crowley said, mirroring Mac's cool tone. He disappeared and then materialized almost chest to chest with Mac. "I'll call you whatever I like. And I already know everything you fear. This face has hurt you … And more, it's hurt someone you love. Pain is my bread and butter, Hollywood. Trust me, you don't want my attention, dear boy."

The way he said 'dear boy' was uncomfortably like the way Murdoc often said it and while it didn't make Mac drop back, it did make Jack take a step forward. He was scared shitless to be encountering a demon, say nothing about the supposed King of Hell, but still, he got a shoulder between Crowley and Mac. "Listen up, your royal hinny-ass, take a step back. Or I'll make you sorry."

"Oooh, Big Daddy, I think I'd love to see you try," Crowley said with distinct appreciation in his voice.

Jack made a face, but didn't step back.

Suddenly, Cas appeared beside Mac as well. "Crowley," he said evenly in his husky voice.

"Clarence," Crowley replied.

Cas shook his head. "That is a very bad pop culture reference. Sam explained it to me. And I already have my wings. You should pay more attention when you are coming up with nicknames. For example, Jack Dalton is of average height and he does not have any children. Your nickname for him makes no sense either."

Jack and Mac looked at each other and started snickering. They were quickly joined in their laughter by Sam and Dean. Dean stepped up behind Crowley and gripped his shoulder. "Yeah, Lucky. We didn't call you hear to pick on the new guy or to not make sense. We called you to find out what the hell you're letting out of your territory to dog the crossroads out here."

Seeing that he was probably not going to get much more entertainment value out of these boys tonight, Crowley brushed Dean off and straightened his jacket. "I already told you, Rocky, I don't know what you and Bullwinkle are on about. I've got nobody up here. Whatever it is … It's not from hell."

"Well then, what is it?" Sam demanded.

Crowley shrugged. He clearly knew. All of them could see it from his expression. "Ah ah ah, Clarence," Crowley said, wiggling a finger at Cas. "No trying to read my thoughts. You save that for your little human playthings, alright?" He smirked again. "Besides, you'll figure it out. Hollywood here is gangbusters at research. Even better than you, Moose."

Mac's glare was impressive, even to Sam and Dean who'd faced plenty of monsters in their day and Mac still wasn't even adjusted to the idea that such things existed. Eyes locked on Crowley, Mac spoke to the Winchesters. "Okay. We summoned a demon and it's useless. How do we get rid of him?"

Crowley's eyes flashed, and he made a quick move toward Mac. The other men tensed to jump the King of Hell, even if all it would buy them is a second. But Mac's hand came out of his pocket and snapped in Crowley's direction. "Aaaaaahhhhh," Crowley screamed in a way that sounded both pained and offended as he stumbled back a few steps.

Everyone realized that little spots all over the demon were smoking. Mac was giving the creature a hard look. "Always bring salt. First rule of Hunters, Your Majesty." He glanced around at the other guys' looks of surprise. "What? He's right. I am good at research."

"Oh, Hollywood. I hope the thing that's roaming these roads takes a nice deep drink of you. Won't that break your loyal and protective Big Daddy's heart? That's what she likes to do, you see."

And he was gone.

Mac puffed out a long breath. Then he reached out and steadied himself against Jack, who's arm had gone around him, just as protectively as Crowley might have predicted just to mock them.

"You okay, Mac?" Sam asked, and everyone was looking at the youngest member of the group with real concern.

After a second Mac nodded, patting Jack's shoulder to let him know he was alright and stepping away.

Jack growled. "Well, that was useless! And now your asshole demon whatever he is knows Mac!"

"I'm sorry, Jack," Dean replied, truly sounding it. "I just seem to keep getting him in deeper and deeper and we didn't even find out anything useful."

"Sure we did," Mac said with a smile that looked very genuine. Cas was grinning at him with approval. Clearly, Mac's capacity for this information had just made a leap forward, since the angel was no longer looking almost as protective as Jack.

"Cas, I think you need to work on his head some more," Dean said. "He's delirious."

"Guys, he told us something really useful," Mac insisted.

Curious looks were exchanged, and Cas looked like he was listening. Cas spoke. "Because it likes to make people who are protecting someone suffer?"

"Exactly," Mac nodded, not even upset that he knew Cas read his thoughts. He grinned at everyone.

"And I think I know what it is."


	8. Chapter 8

"This sounds like a Woman in White," Dean grumbled as he and Jack listened to Mac and Sam rapid-fire facts and stories they were uncovering back and forth across the small table where they sat, Mac with his tablet and Sam with his laptop.

Even though he'd spoken quietly, the both turned to glare at him almost simultaneously. "It's not."

He and Jack shared a look. "Your partner always like this?" Dean asked, with widened eyes.

Jack actually chuckled softly. "Usually. And I don't have to ask if Sam is always like this, because I know he always has been. Kid could do my college homework when he was ten. I don't think I remember ever seein' him without his nose in a book. That hasn't changed last time I saw you guys either."

Dean's expression became softer. "Yeah, Sammy's the brains of this outfit for sure." He glanced furtively at his cousin. "I've always been the muscle. And I've never much cared for havin' him on the front lines with me. I'd do just about anything to get him out of it most days. I'm guessin' you feel the same way about Mac. I guess I should apologize again for getting him involved without thinking, like I did."

Jack gave Dean a little half smile. "Dean … Stop. It's okay, man. You needed help. You reached out … Mac said Sam told him you guys are kind of cut off from … Whatever."

He paused when Dean's face went carefully blank at the near mention of any support system they might have had. He also remembered Mac telling him that Sam said something about Dean 'getting back' and Mac had an idea about from where Sam might have meant that made him _quote_ want to refund a month of lunches _end quote_.

"And as far as not wanting Mac on the front lines of any fight … I may not like seein' him stick his neck out as much as he does, but to be fair, the actual front lines is where I met the kid, so it's not like I get to decide that for him. He doesn't want to leave. Believe me I tried to sort of encourage him back toward the airport, but he's a stubborn little shit …"

Dean snorted sympathetic laughter then. He'd said the same thing about his brother about a thousand times. "He must be pretty hard headed if he pulled himself away from a thrall … And that sure as hell sounds like what he did, Jack."

"Don't surprise me in the least," Jack said with the proud-dad grin Dean recognized. Not just because it was the one Jack Sr. always wore when he told anyone about his son, but because Dean often saw a similar look in the mirror when he thought about the stuff Sam had accomplished, about the good he did in the world.

There was a fine line between big brother and reluctant father figure, and Dean knew he frequently straddled that line in his relationship with Sammy. He'd also gathered from Cas that Jack was as close to family as Mac had. Not that the kid was alone in the world or anything, but because Jack was the one person who'd never let him down or made him feel like he'd let them down.

"I've never heard of this thing they think it is though, man," Dean said, sounding almost nervous. "And if it's got its hooks in Mac …"

"It doesn't have its hooks in him!" Jack said defensively. "You just said he broke a … whadayacallit … a thrall. That means it doesn't have him, right?" Jack went from defensive to apprehensive in a blink.

All of a sudden, Mac was sitting down next to him. "It doesn't have me, Jack. I told you, I'm fine."

Sam came over a few moments later, observing the silent conversation passing between the two men. Mac was sort of pleading with his partner to not freak out and Jack was begging with equal intensity for Mac to take this seriously and be careful. Sam hated to pique Jack's protective streak any more than it was, because he knew how damned irritating he found the same tendency in Dean, but he couldn't just let it ride. "He is, Jack. For now."

Mac glared at Sam with swift betrayed irritation. "We know what it is!" he snapped.

Sam looked away from Mac, sharing a quick look with Dean. Then his eyes were back on the newest initiate into the realm of the insane and hard to explain. And his very concerned partner. "That's why I'm worried, Mac."

Mac made a half dismissive gesture and turned toward Jack, tuning out Sam and Dean for the moment. "So, it's just this thing called La Llorona. And she's very like the Woman in White these guys were talking about," Mac said calmly. He was about to elaborate when Dean spoke over him.

"A weeping woman? That is a woman in white. Sammy, you had me all worried. We'll just comb the papers for a case of missing kids or murdered kids, dig us up some bones and poof, 007 and Q here can go home."

Jack tossed Dean a glare. He'd said exactly nothing about the real nature of their work at Phoenix. And he couldn't believe that Cas just offered it up, even after reading Mac's thoughts. That meant Dean had interrogated their friendly neighborhood angel a little.

And that bugged him almost as much as Dean getting them involved in this. He'd wanted to be forgiving, wanted to just acknowledge that it was okay to reach out for help, but damn it all to hell anyway … Didn't do much good to be mad at Dean or at Cas for that matter. Of course, in Dean's analogy Jack was 007 and Mac was Q, so it was hard to be too upset. Instead of snatching Dean's head off, which he still sort of wanted to do, he asked, "I think there's more to what they found, cousin."

When Jack tipped his chin at him, Sam began to speak again. Sam was glancing back and forth between the three of them. "The weeping woman and woman in white stories probably started with La Llorona, or she might have started with them and drawn energy from the belief people placed in seeing her. But … Dean … I know what you're gonna say … But, we may have stumbled onto a primitive goddess here."

Dean frowned, and Jack looked sick. Mac took their silence as an opportunity to jump back in to the conversation. "La Llorona goes deeper than the mythos of the woman in white. She's deeply steeped in ancient cultures and traditions in this part of the world. Even the Chumash, natives of what we think of as southern California have legends about her. And many anthropologists have linked the myths around her to those of the goddess Lamia in ancient Greece. That's the part of the story that has gotten deep into even modern urban legends in this part of the world. And that's the part that makes me think her targeting me revealed what she is."

He paused, just to take a breath before continuing his explanation when Jack broke in. "So, who's this Lamia, or at least why does she matter in why this thing would go after you?" Jack's frown was Murdoc-level deep.

Mac swallowed hard. Jack was going to hate this. No, that was an understatement. There might not be a word for how Jack was going to feel about this. Wait … no … Guilty … that was probably the word.

"Lamia was a demi-goddess who was robbed of the children she had with Zeus even though she loved them deeply and protected them relentlessly. So she spent eternity robbing others of the most loved and protected of their family and friends."

He paused again, glancing around, almost wishing that Cas had stayed, but also sort of relieved that he wasn't currently the subject of the angel's penetrating gaze. "Some people think she's connected to the fallen angel Lilith."

He stopped short when he saw a look pass between the brothers, but Sam just nodded for him to go on.

"She's the one believed to drain her victims of their blood. It's a legend especially associated with children … Not necessarily minor children, but with loved offspring. She is rumored to feed as much on the sense of the survivors' loss as she does on the flesh and blood of her victims."

Sam jumped in then before Jack or Dean could start questions, doubts, or anything else. Mac was on to something. Sam felt it.

"La Llorona, or Lilith, as she can properly be assumed to be based on our research, brings all kinds of baggage with her, especially if you decide to fight. Shadow people, possessed children of extraordinary power, and she can manifest in many forms. She's often the beautiful weeping woman that other lesser spirits have tried to emulate, a child, a black cloaked figure, and even in the form of the Grim Reaper. And I'm pretty sure I know how to draw her out and get rid of her."

"Are you serious right now?" Dean said, and Sam could tell he was about to go off about things they had faced so he just held up a hand.

"Dean, I think he's right. There's Lilith, and there's Lilith, you know?"

Dean smiled just a little. Sam was already thinking about bringing this to an end and getting their cousin and his young friend out of this mess. And just like he and Sam didn't need to know all the spy shit their cousin got up to (Cas looked a little horrified when he'd revealed that what Mac and Jack did was a secret), those guys didn't need to know the depth of this world either.

"So, you guys think you've identified this thing for sure?" he asked instead.

"Yeah, and …" Sam looked uncomfortable as hell. "There's something else … It's super creepy." He looked at Mac, clearly not wanting to explain but knowing he needed to.

"Go on," Mac said levelly, knowing that whatever was bothering Sam pertained to him, and much as he didn't want to know, he recognized that he needed to before he laid out his plan.

"There's legends that when her victim is a young unmarried man … Shit." He stopped, running his hands over his face and through his long hair. Mac just pinned him with a cool blue stare, ignoring Jack's soft, wide-eyed and fearful dark one. "She's rumored to steal their … you know … and make a demon baby with … you get where I'm going with this?"

Mac got up and strode across the room to the small bathroom, closing the door softly behind him.

Dean spoke first. "Jesus. You think he's okay?"

Jack nodded slowly. Then he contradicted himself. "Nope. Not even a little. But if I've learned nothing else this last year it's this: Mac will take help when he's goddamned good and ready. Not a second before. The one time I've really pushed, he made some real bad decisions and I nearly lost …"

Jack stopped when he heard how husky his voice had gotten.

Then he resumed speaking as he heard the toilet flush and the sink start running. "If he can't handle things, he'll say something. We've just got to trust that he will."

"You think he really came across a way to get rid of this thing?" Dean asked, clearly directing his question at both Sam and Jack.

Jack almost snapped, "He wouldn't have said so if he hadn't. Mac doesn't just talk to hear himself."

Dean widened his eyes at Sam at Jack's defensive tone. The look said, "Wow, would you get a load of this guy?"

Sam's responding amused eyebrow raise just made him frown.

Sam's look said, "Yeah, I wake up half a motel room away from that face every damned day, big brother."

Dean looked at his lap for a few minutes after that. But when the door to the bathroom cracked open again, in spite of Jack and Sam trying to get there first, Dean was the one on his feet.

"Mac … I'm sorry, man, I shouldn't have …"

"What?" Mac bit out. "Called the one person you knew who would help? Or brought in his partner who's done the toughest jobs with him against much more serious shit than the stuff people have nightmares about? I've had scarier things than some creepy myth come after me."

Mac stopped and took a slow deliberate breath. His hair was wet around the edges from repeatedly splashing cold water on his face. He half smiled at the look Jack was giving him. "Do not ask if I'm okay right now," he said with mostly mock severity.

"Wouldn't dream of it," Jack drawled. "Seein' as how you're pretty obviously not." He paused. "Should we try callin' Cas again, kid? You look like garbage."

Mac shook his head and brushed past the three of them to sit down. He knew it was obvious he'd been sick, knew he still looked kind of green, and it was killing Jack, and pretty clearly Dean as well, to not freak out on him. But this wasn't a feeling Castiel could help with. It wasn't his brain trying to bend in ways he's never trained it to. This was the feeling he got when he thought about how obsessed with him Murdoc was. It was the same sick sinking feeling exactly.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, then motioned with his head for the other guys to sit, giving them a wry smirk that took a little effort, but was worth it because the protective expressions on all three of the other faces in the room softened a little.

"Okay, so even if I didn't know this being was a next level stalker with some serious boundary issues, I'd want this over with. Now, I'm just more motivated."

Jack sat down next to him. "What is it with you and psychos getting weird crushes?"

Mac puffed out a laugh. Then he glanced at Jack. "Thanks."

"For what?"

"If you can joke about Murdoc, about this, then it's not a dire as it feels."

Jack put a hand on his shoulder. "Oh, it feels pretty damned dire to me, too, kid. But, before Sam decided you just needed to know that fun little detail about this weirdo woman thing that made you lose your lunch, you said something about knowing how to get rid of it. So, I figure we'll be on a plane back to LA by morning."

Mac swallowed hard. None of them were going to like this either. "You can't destroy her … Not if it's really La Llorona and not just a Weeping Woman copycat."

The others frowned. Dean and Sam thought they could destroy just about anything. But nothing Mac had found was encouraging in that regard.

Mac went on. "But she can be bound. Stories suggest that once she's bound, she loses focus, loses attachment to anything she was going after. And you can get rid of the object you bind her in far away from you."

Dean was nodding. He'd done plenty of bindings before. "That shouldn't be too hard then, even if she invites all those friends you were talking about to the party. But since we don't know for sure the identity she's attached to, we can't exactly summon her. It'd be best to get her into a Devil's Trap."

Mac and Jack both looked a question at him.

"It's a spell kind of a thing. Keeps most demons from moving off where you want them. But getting her there is going to be the hard part. It's not like she's only bound to one spot like a Weeping Woman anyway."

Mac nodded. "That's where I come in."

He glanced at Jack again, almost flinching at the look on his partner's face.

"If she's 'got a crush' so to speak. We'll get everything we need to bind her and get her out of this place and off my back. Then we use me as bait."

"Mac, no way," Jack protested immediately.

Mac shook his head, sighing. He didn't like it either. Especially not now. "You got a better idea?"

Jack's expression of frustrated, fearful anger at his own helplessness in this situation carved his face into deep lines. "Almost never," he admitted with a sigh of his own.


	9. Chapter 9

Once Mac had decided on a course of action and been filled in about a few things by the Winchesters, he was like watching a tornado tear through the room. He bounced from place to place where he had various projects in different stages of development.

Sam had gone out to get a few things they might need for various spells. Jack and Dean stayed behind with Mac. Jack because there was no way he was leaving the kid unsupervised with some creepy demon god thingy lusting after his blood and Dean because when he saw the protective fury in his cousin's eyes, he didn't think he could trust him to be rational. There was no way to protect Mac from this thing if he couldn't think clearly.

Jack and Dean leaned against the long wall by the bathroom door in the room, Jack with his arms crossed over his chest like he was cold and Dean with his casually in his pockets. Mac whizzed by them for about the fiftieth time, mumbling to himself and pretty clearly doing math in his head, by Jack's estimation. Mac swore and snapped his had a few times after burning himself with a hot glue gun, but didn't even pause otherwise in what he was doing.

"Damned kid is like a Tasmanian Devil," Dean mumbled to Jack.

Jack managed a half smile. "Sometimes."

The next time he bolted by trying to catch his other project at a particular stage of heating over the in-room hot plate, he almost tripped over Dean's boots. Dean thought the kid looked a little frantic and decided it was time to pull him up short and give him the 'yeah monsters are real but so what' talking to he thought the guy needed.

"Hey!"

Mac didn't even glance his way, just kept working on a strange contraption that had PVC and paper clips for some damned reason or another.

"Hey, Taz!" Dean practically shouted, prepared to explain the analogy about the Bugs Bunny beast if necessary.

Instead of having a chance, Castiel appeared, leaning on the wall between him and Jack. "Hello, Dean," he said pleasantly.

"I didn't even call you!" Dean said indignantly. "You were lurking!"

"I was not … _lurking_ … I was merely observing."

Jack snickered. "If it means you're hanging around looking out for Mac, lurk away, buddy."

Cas gave him a small smile. "I am endeavoring to look out for Mac, Jack Dalton. You are an excellent guardian, but you are no angel."

Dean laughed. "Did you just make a joke?"

Cas's smile grew. "That is possible. Was it funny?" he asked with a little brow wrinkle.

Jack patted him on the shoulder and Dean just laughed again. "It was funny, Cas."

Cas grinned at Jack, Dean just chuckled at the expression and shook his head. Apparently, Cas's immediate affection for MacGyver was going to extend to his partner now as well. Damned if he was ever going to figure this angel out. His strange likes and dislikes, say nothing about how he related to people, were constant sources of frustration for the older Winchester.

"What is Mac doing?"

Dean smirked, "Other than running around like a chicken with his head cut off?"

"Dean … They don't actually do that, do they? Run around after being decapitated?" Cas asked, looking slightly horrified.

Dean shrugged. "In my experience …" he trailed off, not wanting to say that his experience included mostly sacrificing them for some dark spell work rather than getting ready for dinner.

Cas's eyes widened so Jack helpfully supplied, "Only a little, Cas. I grew up on a ranch and we always had chickens. It's not … Don't let it worry you."

"Hi, Cas," Mac greeted almost breathlessly as he hurried by with wet towels from the bathroom.

"Hello, Mac. What are you doing? Jack and Dean are not being helpful in sharing information."

Mac flashed a brief smile, considering telling Cas that 'information' and 'helpful' were not necessarily part of their skill sets, but he decided joking would probably just confuse the angel and Cas actually was trying to help, not just hover over him and make him feel like a kid who somebody is worried is going to run away from home. He went back to working but answered, "I'm making some stuff to take on La Llorona. There's an air gun for salt, a pressure sprayer for holy water, and I'm building a lead lined box for putting the binding stuff in once the spell's over with … I've got to figure something out to lay a Devil's Trap quickly too, because that's going to be a moving target … And …"

Cas held up a hand to stop Mac just as though Mac were looking at him. And just like he could see him, Mac's explanation stopped. He turned toward Cas, frowning. "Did you just think that at me?"

"That I needed you to be quiet? Yes."

"Don't do that!" he snapped, suddenly furious again. "You promised you wouldn't just …" He puffed out a long breath through pursed lips. Maybe Castiel couldn't help it. "Just try not to do it, okay? Talk out loud."

"I did not want to interrupt you. That would be rude."

Mac shook his head, sinking down into the nearest chair and running both hands through his hair, a gesture Jack recognized as exhaustion combined with frustration. "Cas, I appreciate your attempts at observing social norms and cultural mores, but if you could just take my word that I prefer to be physically interrupted rather than by you going directly into my head, I'd really appreciate it. I might have mentioned my personal space bubble. My head is definitely in it."

"I am sorry, Mac."

Mac smiled slightly at Cas's chagrined expression. "That's okay. Just … It's okay," he repeated. "What do you need?"

Cas hesitated, frowned, and then spoke. "I must apologize again. I read your thoughts and …"

Mac took another deep breath, looked like he might speak, but then just let it out and waved for Cas to continue.

"You are planning to use these things tonight."

"Yeah," Mac said, nodding.

Jack added, "The sooner we get clear of this, the better."

"Since we can't just gank this chick, I'd just as soon get her bound so we can chuck her in the ocean or something ASAP," Dean agreed.

"You need to wait." Cas emphasized his statement with a curt, definitive nod.

Cas shook his head. "Tonight is the night of no moon."

He looked at them expectantly.

"Okay, I'll bite," Mac sighed. "Why does that mean we have to wait?"

"Because that is the night every month of her greatest power. It is a night to attack vulnerable things. She sees in the darkness because she comes from it."

"Well doesn't that sound cheerful," Jack said with a roll of his eyes and a worried frown at Mac.

"It is not a cheerful thing at all, Jack," Cas said seriously. "It would put Mac in very grave danger to meet that creature on this night."

"Well, we sure as hell don't want him in more danger than he's already in," Jack said, his voice taking on the protective edge that Mac knew meant he was going to wind up frustrated with his partner before very long.

"No, we do not," Cas agreed. "Dean, tell this young one I am not overreacting. I do not overreact."

"Quit reading my mind," Mac bit out.

"I was not. But your eyebrows speak almost as loudly as your thoughts, Angus … I am sorry … Mac." He paused. "Dean, reassure him, please."

"He's on the up and up, kid. Cas has never steered us wrong yet."

"So … If you're going to call foul on tonight's mission … What do you suggest?" Mac asked, not really prepared to argue any more.

He could tell from Jack's expression that it would just make him more entrenched in protective mode, and Dean looked ready to follow right along with his cousin. Since he didn't have Sam here to tell them to chill out a little, he was probably stuck going along with a delay of game.

"I have no suggestions for how you might spend your time this evening, but I will advise you to stay together. Spending time some place where other humans congregate and there is light and noise and companionship would seem the safest way for you to get past this dangerous moment," Cas offered opening his hands. "I would also suggest that I stay with you, as additional protection."

Mac shrugged. "Whatever. I'm still going to finish this stuff up though."

Sam came back through the door then with the rest of what Mac needed for his various contraptions. "Hey, Cas," he greeted mildly. "What's up?"

Dean answered, "We're scrubbing tonight. New moon. Cas says it's a no go."

Sam nodded. "I wondered about that."

Jack grumbled, "Why didn't you say somethin'?"

Sam shrugged, "You and Dean have a history of just ignoring me and bulling into stuff. Didn't think it was worth the argument if it didn't show up in Mac's research."

Mac suddenly seemed to be looking everywhere but at Dean and Jack, mostly by giving at least three of his projects his undivided attention all at once.

"Did something about the new moon show up in your research?" Jack asked, an edge creeping into his voice.

"I … um … not really …" Mac mumbled.

"Angus Henry MacGyver," Jack barked, calling up memories of days of uniforms and sand in their boots. "Did you know the new moon might make tonight more dangerous?"

Mac shrugged, glancing at Jack guiltily. "I guess. I mean, I saw a few references, but I just figured she … she wants my blood Jack … The danger is relative." Jack glared in return. "That's how it feels anyway."

Sam was the most immediately sympathetic. "Yeah, it can be like that when you know something's set its sights on you."

Mac looked up at him. "That's happened to you?"

Sam nodded. "But you can't lose sight of the mission, even when it feels personal. It causes trouble, gets other people hurt."

He locked eyes with Dean across the room and something passed between the brothers that Mac recognized immediately. The story told by the look was that Sam had lost sight of the big picture, had maybe been reckless, and it had cost Dean deeply. He wasn't going to make that mistake with his partner. That had happened before and he didn't want a repeat performance.

"Okay, I get it. A step back is a good idea. I should have said something." He looked at Jack again. "I'm sorry Jack. Whatever we do tonight should be up to you. Old Man's choice."

Jack chuckled, and though his expression still held some reserve, some annoyance that Mac had held something back from him, he wanted to let the kid off the hook at little. "How about you finish up and then we all go get some dinner."

Mac grinned. "Sounds like a good start."

Dean grinned at his cousin. "There's a joint up the street that does a mean rack of ribs …"

"Aw man, I love ribs done right, Cuz."

"I remember," Dean smirked, thinking he'd never seen anyone with an appetite quite like Jack's when it came to charred cow. "They also have karaoke," he added with a double raise of his eyebrows."

"No! No way" Mac and Sam said together.

"Too late, Mac," Jack crowed, mostly thinking a couple of beers and bad karaoke would be the perfect way to get Mac to relax a little and also to annoy him enough that he'd be too distracted to think about La Llorona and what was in front of them, not to mention to while away the time tonight which Mac would so clearly rather be using to get the hell out of this mess. "You admitted you pulled a bonehead move and gave me Old Man's choice. Old Man chooses karaoke."

Half of Mac's mouth lifted in a wry smirk. "Well, at least I got you to cop to being an old man."

Sam grinned at Mac, in what he hoped was an encouraging way. Letting go of something like just wanting to put an end to a threat, even when you knew you might not be thinking about it clearly, was tough. And this was so new to Mac, Sam had wondered how it might affect his decision making. So far his cousin's partner was doing pretty well. "Dean chose it too. He suggested it even. That makes him an old man by default."

Mac laughed at the totally offended look on Dean's face. Dean, on the other hand, took a pillow off the bed and chucked it at Sam's head. "Bitch!"

Sam smirked as he chucked it back. "Jerk."

0-0-0

The bar was about as noisy and smoky and crowded as Jack and Dean had hoped. When Sam and Mac came in on their heels, they both shared a look of disapproval at the number of patrons with cigarettes or cigars hanging off their lips. Mac was used to Los Angeles, which had been one of the first places in the U.S. to ban smoking in public places, and Sam just had a general disdain for anyone actively doing something so negative for themselves. It also irked the hell out of him that Dean smoked sometimes. He knew Jack did too since their Texan cousin had been the one to introduce Dean to cigars.

Jack and Dean seemed unfazed as they made their way through the jampacked dance floor over to one of the tables. Mac slid in to one of the seats by the wall when it became clear Jack was waiting for him to take a position he could secure. Sam did the same, not because Dean was being the over protective pain in the ass he used to be, but because he thought Mac needed a kindred spirit to talk to. As a couple of intellectuals in a very non-intellectual situation, Sam thought it would ground both of them. Cas sat down next to Dean. There really wasn't room, but that never stopped Cas from sitting anywhere, they supposed. And larger tables weren't available on this busy Friday night.

The teased hair, bleached-blonde waitress came over and took their order, and Mac and Sam shared another look. Leave it to Dean and Jack to bring them to a bar that was a literal stereotype. Mac had to admit though, the Family Business Microbrew that Jack preferred and that seemed to be widely available here, was damned good. High proof, but smooth. Sam agreed but wished aloud that their co-dinners, including Cas, weren't chugging it like there was no tomorrow.

Mac just shrugged. Jack had a tendency to tip a little heavy if he was stressed. He also had the weird ability to only be as buzzed as he wanted at any given moment. Like he could shake off being half in the bag at the drop of a text. Mac had no such ability though, and about a third of a half of a beer in, his head already felt light. Sam figured an empty stomach did that to a guy and he hadn't noticed Mac eating all day, just moving food around mostly.

When their food came, Sam watched Mac a little more carefully than he might otherwise have done. Something more than tension about not just getting to go out on the mission was building, but he couldn't quite figure out what. Unlike the rest of them who'd ordered a combination of burgers and ribs (this was Texas after all), Mac ordered the chicken fingers and fries. As far as Sam could tell he'd taken a couple of bites and was mostly moving things around.

Sam was about to say something about Mac's distracted demeanor and total lack of actual dinner consumption (he had a fair amount of experience with both) when their table's number got called for the second time that evening by the MC for the evening's karaoke entertainment.

The opening number for the Not-so-dynamic duo of Jack and Dean had been a practically tone-deaf version of Wanted Dead or Alive. Sam and Mac had just looked back and forth at each other laughing into their beer. Cas had been confused. "Why are people clapping at them? Sam? Angus? Explain, please."

Mac shook his head. "I wish I could, Cas. But … It's not about how they sound I guess. It's more that people … Other people wish they were brave enough to get up there and suck that much and keep smiling, I think."

Cas had appeared to consider that for a few minutes and then he nodded sagely. "They are both _very_ brave."

Sam snorted laughter. He'd been listening to his brother's bad karaoke for years.

Of course, they all gently teased the performers when they returned to the table. But Jack kept darting glances at Mac. Something wasn't sitting right with him. Mac wasn't as pleasantly distracted by their antics as he had hoped. Mac's good-natured ribbing has a rehearsed, scripted feel.

Jack leaned across the table, during someone's raucous version of Garth Brooks' Friends in Low Places and whispered something neither Mac nor Sam caught. Shortly thereafter their number came up again. They started out with some low almost country electric guitar, and then Dean gave the song away with the perfectly delivered movie quote, "Yoohoo. I'll make ya famous."

What followed dropped Mac, and Sam, and even Cas's jaws. This version of a Bon Jovi song entirely made up for the earlier debacle. Singing with almost perfect pitch and blending their voices in complex harmonies like they'd rehearsed it a thousand times, Jack and Dean practically silenced the whole bar. When they finished, silence followed for a moment, before the whole crowd erupted in screams, shouts, and applause of adulation.

Calls of "Encore!" and "More!" rang out over the bar. Jack glanced at their table and saw the awed expressions of the angel, as well as Mac and Sam and just tipped the MC a grin. "Audience's choice."

After several minutes of audience members voting and passing money back and forth, some familiar music floated over the crowd. Mac sucked in his breath a little at the pure, almost sweet sound of Jack's carefully cultivated tenor singing the words to a song Mac's dad had loved when he was a kid.

" _Carry on my wayward son_ …"

Then Dean joined him, huskier, deeper, but no less beautiful. " _There'll be peace when you are done_."

" _Lay your weary head to rest. Don't you cry no more_ …"

Mac suddenly felt the urge to do just exactly what the song was telling him not to. He swallowed hard against the unexpected feeling and slid out of his seat.

He tempered the weird surge of emotions with the thought that he was going to punch Jack in the arm as hard as he reasonably could for pretending to suck at singing for so long, mostly because he was pretty sure it had been done as a ploy to distract him in the past and also because he felt affronted at the past assaults to his ears.

"Hey," Sam frowned up at him, around Cas who was transfixed by the beauty of the music Jack and Dean were making, partially due to his surprise that Dean could actually sing and partially because music tended to do that to angels. Cas had once told Sam it reminded him of home, the way it was supposed to be. "Where you going?"

Mac didn't exactly look at him when he answered. "Bathroom, then … You want another beer?"

Sam continued to frown, but he was so surprised by his brother's beautiful voice, by Jack's too, that he wasn't paying Mac his full attention. "Yeah, that'd be great … Did you know he can sing?" he asked.

Mac shook his head slowly. "Nah, but now I feel like he's been playing me for years. They could have their own record deal." Rather than say much else, he glanced at Cas. "Get you another beer, Cas?" he asked.

Cas nodded slowly. He couldn't quite open his mouth to say anything. Their music was too perfect. And he felt weirdly susceptible to being transfixed tonight.

Mac just gave him a nod and headed off toward the rest room.

Sam's eyes followed Mac across the bar. "Hey, Cas?"

"Yes, Sam?" Cas responded, not taking his eyes off the stage.

"Does Mac seem okay to you?"

Still not paying Sam any particular attention. "He seems upset, but trying hard to hide it. Beyond that I do not know. He has made it very clear that he does not want me in his head."

Sam nodded. "Yeah, I don't think he much likes anybody in there, even metaphorically speaking." Talking to himself more than to Cas at this point, he murmured, "Maybe that's why this is bothering him so much. La Llorona is in there, and he can't just pry her out."

A minute or two later, he saw Mac exit the men's room and make his way over toward the bar. Mac moved through the crowd like a ghost, never quite touching anyone else, his facial expression changing subtly with everyone he made eye contact with, scanning the room with seeming casualness that covered up an intense vigilance.

Sam gave a little shake of his head. Dean and Jack were in fits over the threat to Mac, pushing their concern over anyone else La Llorona might harm well into the background of their thoughts. Cas was, too, although he hadn't exactly said it out loud. Sam had his own protective streak. He knew he did. You couldn't really be raised by Dean Winchester and not come away with one. But it was nothing like a fierce as Dean's, or Jack's apparently. And Cas … this was a new side of Cas that made Sam wonder about it a little.

But, watching Mac approach the bar, Sam thought again that maybe the guys were overstating Mac's potential vulnerability. Sam had some idea of what those two really did for work, and he'd sort of always wondered how a spy would work a room. Now, though, he realized he needn't have wondered. Mac moved like a Hunter. Hyperaware of his surroundings without even realizing it, evaluating people, potential threats in a way that was automatic. And his movements were fluid, athletic, trained.

And good Lord, nobody needed to worry about a demon-goddess creature nabbing him in this place. Sam thought every woman in the place had their eye on him and more than a few of the guys did too. Sure, Mac was a good-looking guy, but not more so really than any of the rest of their party.

Sam thought it was maybe Mac's natural charisma that was so downplayed by his modest, self-deprecating nature. Whatever it was, nobody was going to make a move on Mac without almost everyone else in the bar noticing. Mac was leaning against the bar ordering when a very attractively built woman in impossibly tight white jeans and peasant top divided with a red silken sash and dangerous red stilettos sidled up to him and started talking. Sam couldn't see the woman's face, but Mac's almost blushing smile and immediate response told Sam he didn't need to be staring at the guy from across the bar just because the others were worried about him. He let his eyes wander back up to the stage where Jack and Dean were finishing the song.

Raucous cheers and applause followed them back to their seats at the table. Dean slid right into his seat, edging Cas back over toward Sam and picking up his beer with an almost blushing grin of his own. "Didn't know your big brother actually had some pipes, didja Sammy?"

"You know I hate it when you call me Sammy, Dean. I'm not a chubby eleven year old," Sam groused in familiar terms.

Jack had almost made it to sitting when he frowned at the empty seat and stood back up, looking around the bar. "Where's Mac?"

Sam shrugged, glancing around a little, too. "He was getting some more drinks, but got waylaid by a hottie at the bar. Looked like he was enjoying himself."

Jack squinted through the smoke up at the bar. "Well, he's not there now … I'm just gonna go have a walk around and see where he's gotten to."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I'm sure he'll appreciate that Jack," he said sarcastically. "The girl was cute as hell and Mac was actually talking to her last I looked. Weren't you giving him shit the other night for his total lack of game? Let the guy be."

Jack's brow creased further. "I would if some chick wasn't roaming the roads looking to drink his blood, Sam … I'll be back."

Dean got up, too. "I gotta hit the head anyway. I'll see if he's in there."

Cas watched the two men walk away and his face screwed up in intense thought.

"What's up, Cas?" Sam asked.

"I told Mac I would stay out of his head, but they are worried, and now I am worried."

"Look, don't go digging around or anything, but given the situation, I don't think it would be so bad to be able to tell the guys he's okay so they'll leave him alone long enough to have a drink with a pretty girl," Sam reasoned. One night to just kick back a little would probably do Mac a world of good.

Cas's frown deepened.

"Go on, Cas, it'll make you all feel better."

Cas met Sam's eyes with his own. "That is the problem, Sam. I just tried. I cannot locate Mac."

"In the bar?"

"Anywhere."

Sam was practically shoving Cas out of the booth a moment later. "Dean! Jack!" he called as he and the angel moved around trying to locate Mac or the other guys. Finally, they ran into each other by the jukebox. "Sam, what is it?" Jack asked before Sam could even open his mouth.

"Mac's gone. Cas can't find his thoughts."

Jack and Dean shared a quick look that was both wide-eyed concern and immediate deadly anger. "Son of a bitch," they bit out in unison.

Then the three of them headed out of the noisy bar to decide what to do next.


	10. Chapter 10

Jack felt weirdly numb watching the Winchesters gear up and load the car with what they thought they needed to go rescue Mac. He was trying to be helpful, but found himself feeling like he was just in the way. He stood back, hands in his pockets.

He had a feeling, right in the pit of his stomach, not unlike the one he'd had when Murdoc had taken Mac and he realized the trail had gone cold. Mac was on his own. And Jack could think of nothing he could do to find him or to help.

Actually, this was worse. When Murdoc had taken Mac, Jack had been worried, horrified, almost panicked even. But he'd also known that Mac could handle himself. He'd been trained in every way possible to resist interrogation, escape from impossible levels of captivity; and there was no quit in Mac. The kid was a fighter like no one lese Jack had ever met. But this …

Not only was Mac in a situation that he was unprepared for, but the creature who had ahold of him had the ability to get in his head, to try to force control. Jack didn't think he'd ever been more worried about Mac in his life, and given their jobs and how long they had known one another, that was saying something.

"They will find him, Jack Dalton." Cas spoke right on Jack's elbow and he startled just a little.

Jack glanced sideways, but his eyes quickly returned to his cousins' preparations and to trying to figure out the almost coded language they naturally used with one another. "I sure hope so, Cas," he replied, his voice too tight to sound even close to normal.

One of Cas's hands settled onto Jack's shoulder, applying gentle pressure until Jack turned to look at him. "No … No, you don't." Jack frowned, about to contradict the angel, but Cas went on. "You have lost hope at the moment, Jack. But you have to find it. You have to armor yourself with it. If you don't, then you will lose your friend."

Jack took a shaky breath. "What are you talking about?"

"Mac already told all of you what this is about … but I don't think you really heard him." Cas paused, giving Jack a kind, understanding smile. "This is about you, Jack."

Jack's frown deepened. "Cas, I appreciate what you're trying to do … But I'm not the one who got pinched by this La Llorona thing. God only knows what she's going to do to him …"

Cas squeezed Jack's shoulder. "She feeds on your pain, Jack. Not her captives'. She'll drink him dry, torment him endlessly before she does, but not to hurt him. It will be to hurt you. Mac is a bystander, spiritually speaking. La Llorona targeted him because of your feelings."

Jack almost rolled his eyes. Everyone behaved like the bond he and Mac shared was unusual, but for Christ's sake, they'd been to war together, been through a hell of a lot. Okay, Jack had to admit to maybe being a little protective of the guy, but that was a) his job, and b) Mac didn't have anybody else to fill that role. Boze was a great friend, almost the ultimate kid brother (although he was even a little older than Mac, he'd never seemed it). But Mac hadn't had parents since years before he could shave.

Jack sighed and ran his hands over his stubbly face, through his short hair and when he spoke again, he didn't quite look at Cas. "You mean because I look at him like a brother and losing him would about kill me. Dean is Sam's brother and I've never met a more protective dude in my life than Dean when it comes to Sammy."

"Well, events have shaped their relationship a bit in the last few years." Cas frowned, searching for what to say. Words were not necessarily his gift when it came to communicating with humans. "I mean because you often look at him like a son. And it almost surely would."

Jack considered their frequent banter about him being a helicopter parent. Although he'd always thought of Mac more as a little brother that needed guidance from time to time and more overtly thought of Riley as his kid, he realized just how frequently his instincts were to parent rather than just sit back. With both of them.

Oh, thank God Riley wasn't here. Jack was still trying to convince himself that she could take care of herself at all. And he knew it wasn't fair, but his protective instincts as they related to his little girl were almost ridiculous. Even he realized it. But right now, he couldn't think of Mac as any more capable given the situation, and the idea of losing either of those kids made him sick. If Mac'd been grabbed by a terrorist, a drug dealer, hell, even Murdoc, Jack wouldn't feel cold all over like he did right now.

Jack made himself look at Cas. He wasn't even about to deny what Cas had said. He knew it was true. He loved the reckless little shit he'd been calling Partner since the guy could barely shave. And sometimes he thought of him as just his good friend, and more often like a brother, and sure, every once in a while, when the kid needed him to, he thought of him like a son.

"You mean I've gotta try to do the Mac thing and put all those feelings in a box and sit on it so they can't get out or this crazy bitch is gonna hurt Mac more?"

Cas finally took his hand away from Jack's shoulder. "I believe that is exactly what I mean. I also believe you just perfectly described the inside of Mac's head."

Jack managed a slight grin, although it was a little wan. "I been trying to figure out what goes on in that ginormous brain a his for a long time now, Cas."

Cas frowned again.

"Whatsamatter, Cas?"

"Dean! Sam!" he called, drawing the Winchesters' attention to him and Jack. "I have a sense of MacGyver again. He is thinking very hard at me directly."

Jack felt a bright spark of hope at Cas's words. "What's he thinking at you Cas?"

Cas's face fell.

"That we need to hurry. That he's running out of time."


	11. Chapter 11

Mac came around slowly. The first thing he registered was his pounding head.

It felt like someone had hit him.

Hard.

Maybe with a brick.

He knew he was lying on the ground, could feel odd stones poking into his back and legs, dirt working its way up under the rumpled edge of his shirt and into the waistband of his jeans. And it was cold. Cold and damp, despite nearby flickering fire light that he could see from behind his closed lids, and smell the wood and smoke, hear the crackle. None of its warmth reached him.

His hands were freezing, and he realized as he tried to shift position that something icy had an iron grip on both his wrists. The experience of being Murdoc's captive forced its way into his consciousness all at once and he had the overwhelming urge to just roll onto his side and be sick. Since that wasn't an option, he took a steadying breath.

If he could get away from Murdoc, he could get himself out of … whatever this was.

Except he had no memories that gave him any clue as to where he was or why he was there at all. The last thing he could recall through the thundering haze of the headache he had was getting off the plane in Brownsville and Jack bitching about the nondescript beige sedan Matty had rented them.

Wait … No … He remembered … Everything up to the bar. Then he remembered standing in the loud smoky room, listening to Jack and Dean reveal the depth of their previous subterfuge of pretending to be tone deaf and an absolutely stunning woman brushing his arm with long red nails. He remembered talking to her, being drawn in by her. Then she'd suggested they leave together and he'd said no, he couldn't, that he was with people. Her face changed, melted, distorted; he saw underneath her beautiful mask. His last memory before waking was that she'd unhinged her jaw and swallowed him whole.

He knew that couldn't have been real, that it was something his brain was doing to make meaning out of something he couldn't comprehend, but it didn't alter the memory of the feelings it caused. The urge to be sick returned and this time he tried to move a little. The pressure on his wrists increased and he realized something was pressing his elbows into the ground, too. And that was cold, too. Someone had taken his leather jacket. Maybe that's why he was almost shivering.

He breathed carefully for a few minutes until the nausea passed.

Then he forced his eyes open.

Despite the pain the minimal light caused and his immediate urge to squeeze them shut again, Mac felt his eyes go very wide. He wasn't tied up or restrained with cuffs as he'd thought. He was surrounded by four small children, each one gripping one of his limbs with both hands, pinning him almost painfully to the floor. They were all staring intently into his face.

Not one of them could have been more than six or seven, since the oldest looked to be almost exactly Annabelle Pena's age, and the youngest was a little boy with white blond hair that appeared as young as four. Their apparent ages would have made the strength with which they held him down horrifying enough in its own right. But their eyes …

Mac squeezed his shut as soon as he regained voluntary control over them. He felt himself panting in panic and didn't seem able to stop. One of them spoke, her voice as icy as the grip she had on his wrist and elbow. "Mother, it's awake. But it's going to make itself pass out again."

 _Again? Again?_ Had he been conscious before and just blacked it out?

The answer floated through whatever space they were in, and Mac's experience told him it was a cave of some sort and the sound of it made his heart hammer harder in his chest, his breathing pick up even further until he started to feel lightheaded.

" _Yo estaré allí, cariño. Deseo beber de él otra vez._ "

Mac translated in his head. " _I will be right there, my darling. I wish to drink from him again._ "

 _Again._

He shivered.

It was the voice of a corpse, reanimated in a nightmare, of bones rattling in a box. It was the sound of all the menace that demon they'd summoned implied. The sound … Of Hell. No, worse, it was the sound of something the King of Hell didn't want anything to do with.

There was no way he was going to get out of this mess if he didn't get his shit together, Mac thought. And maybe he was just disoriented, had overreacted to the light playing oddly on those kids' faces. Only one way to find out, he supposed, and opened his eyes again. The children all leaned toward him with hungry expressions on their otherwise weirdly blank faces.

It hadn't been a trick of the light. Their eyes were only whites, and were glowing faintly blue in the dimness. His brain helpfully supplied that _La Llorona_ was often associated with possessed children. That actually made it easier to focus. If he could get to his jacket, wherever that was, he had a couple of containers of holy water, some salt, and a few odds and ends. He forced himself to look around to see if he could put eyes on it.

He swallowed hard, despite an uncomfortably dry mouth and throat when he saw things that were just shadows moving around the cave, they had the shapes of men, but no substance. Dark things made of smoke. But they were moving things, stacking rocks … building cages. Cages. _Jesus._

He wasn't really conscious of doing it, but he started struggling against the cold hands holding him down. "Mother," the little blond boy called in an achingly young voice. "He's fighting again."

A woman approached from behind Mac's head; he could just make out the shape of her in his peripheral vision. "Not for long, dear one," she said, this time in English. Almost like it was for his benefit, like she wanted him to know. "He will be too weak to fight soon. Then we might just have some of his friends over for the party, my loves."

Mac remembered vaguely what the face that went with the true voice of this creature had looked like. She's been the color of a week-old corpse, with large black eyes, deep furrows in her features, not wrinkles, but like a jack-o-lantern left too long on someone's porch. And her teeth, were perfect sharp shark's teeth, endless rows of them.

He wanted to close his eyes against seeing that again as the figure crouched down next to him, but found, once again, that he was unable to make his body obey even the simplest commands. He was cold into his bones, but slicked with sweat now, like he'd been struggling much harder than he'd realized. His breath came in rapid, irregular hitches, and his mouth was so dry he thought he might sell his soul for a sip of water.

He realized all at once that the children had moved back, and the woman-creature was sitting next to him on the floor, cross legged, a conversational expression on her totally normal looking face. No, not normal; beautiful, gorgeous even. She reached out a delicate graceful hand and trailed long red fingernails down his cheek.

He could feel calm returning, and warmth.

He couldn't move, even though no one was holding him down now, but that didn't seem to matter.

"That's better," she crooned, running her fingernails back through his hair and brushing his damp bangs off his face. "It's no good if you're upset, you see. Be calm and quiet, little one," she encouraged with the same tone that she's used on the children before.

Only now the voice didn't sound frightening, it sounded lovely, soothing. He didn't even mind that she called him little one, as though he was a child. The thought that even being called kid usually pissed him off tried to take root in his brain, but it couldn't seem to find a place to hang onto, so it trailed away.

Mac felt his eyes wanting to close, but he wasn't able to let them.

She spoke again, holding out the hand she wasn't running through his hair. "Give me your hand, child."

He couldn't feel his own hand, didn't believe he could move it, but nevertheless he saw it lifting off the floor and placing itself in hers. She grasped it by the wrist, looking at his arm with an expression that made him shiver again; he felt the cold of the floor and tried to shift away from it.

She frowned at him.

"I said be calm."

This time there was a sharpness in her voice that made him want to pull away. Her eyes bored into his.

"You cannot get away, child. You belong to me now. I am in every little crevice of your mind. But it keeps fighting. So silly. If you would just be calm, this fear your mind wants you to feel would fall away."

As he was forced to look in her eyes, the warmth started to spread through him again.

 _No!_ This was what Sam had told him about. This was a thrall. And he could fight it, break free. He'd already done it once.

He began focusing intently on feeling the cold and hard stone around him, smelling the fire, seeing this terrifying creature's true face. The beautiful features stuttered, switched back and forth between the face she wanted him to see, and the one that really belonged to her. He was able to twitch and almost begin to roll over. Her talons dug into his wrist, eliciting a pained gasp.

"You don't have to suffer you know. Suffering is for your friend. But if you fight with me, if you do not let me into your mind completely, the pain you will feel will know no limits."

She squeezed his wrist again and he was almost certain he felt something break, but the shout of pain was arrested in his throat, since he had no control over his own voice at the moment. She stopped running her hand through his hair and reached inside her white robes, drawing out a small silver knife. It glittered wickedly in the firelight.

He intensified his mental efforts to free himself.

She smiled down at him then, and the face no longer wavered or held any trace of a human woman. Mac was alone with a fairytale monster. "Such a stubborn boy," she whispered. "I suppose I'll have to feast on your suffering as well."

Finally, he managed some semblance of control and managed to jerk his arm, testing her grip. "No!"

She smiled a terrifying smile, revealing her monstrous sharp teeth. "Oh yes. And I promise you … This is going to hurt."

She drew the blade across the inside of Mac's arm and whatever it was made of, or treated with, burned like fire. Her horrible, gaping mouth was the only thing he could see then, as a lolling purple tongue stretched out and licked her colorless lips. She lowered her face to his arm and started pulling his blood from him in long draughts that sent agony through every blood vessel.

She had enough control over him again that he could no longer even attempt to pull away from the pain, from the certain death he knew she meant. And he was out of ideas.

He started to feel a dreamy sort of placidity come over him that he knew, in a distant disinterested way, was probably a symptom of blood loss, but which just sort of made him remember once when he'd been really little, being sick with a fever. He remembered his parents being downright frantic about it, but he felt the same sort of sleepy disinterest he did now. A cool hand started carding through his hair again.

He could almost hear his mother's voice then. "Oh Angus, wake up. We're all so worried about you. Angus, please, baby."

 _Angus._

 _Angus._

Nobody ever called him that anymore. And he was glad. It made him miss her too much. Just like Cas said. He should have asked Cas if she was in heaven, he thought groggily. Cas would have told him. Cas liked him. He could tell.

 _Cas!_

Cas could help him. Cas could find him. And Cas could bring Jack and the Winchesters who definitely knew how to bind this thing. He knew he'd asked him to stay out of his head, but as he moaned softly through another wave of pain as La Llorona drank deeply from his arm again, he hopped maybe Cas hadn't totally listened.

With the last little bit of strength he had left, he shouted with his thoughts.

Mac was not a religious guy.

But as he called out to Cas with his mind, it was definitely a prayer.

And something told Mac that the angel heard his plea, even as he slipped once again into unconsciousness.


	12. Chapter 12

Jack thought Dean was driving like an old woman. And he said so.

Repeatedly.

Dean threw Jack a look that was somewhere between a sympathetic glance and a glare via the rearview mirror.

He took a deep breath, exchanging a look with Sam, who just nodded. "Jack, we're going as fast as we can, man. We've seen at least six shadow people beside the road in the last five miles. And the last one threw rocks. Shadow people who can affect matter aren't something we've seen before. If we're not careful we'll wind up … Not being able to help Mac. Okay?"

Cas gripped Jack's shoulder until he turned to look at him. "He is alive Jack. He is not well, necessarily, but I do not sense any injury that is beyond repair. We are nearly there."

He nodded to reinforce his words. Jack Dalton was the strangest combination of cold hard edges and soft, warm vulnerability that Cas had ever encountered, even more so than Dean. "You're sure?" Jack asked, his voice almost hoarse with tension and his hands flexing like they wanted to grip weapons he knew would do them no good against an enemy that was not alive in any way he understood.

Cas nodded. "Jack, this is not one of your missions. I am with you. I am an angel of the Lord. Anything he has suffered, I will heal. I promise you."

Jack nodded, but didn't speak. Sam turned in his seat. "Um … Jack … I know you're trying, but you've got to get on top of what you're feeling. If what Mac found was accurate, you're actually feeding her with where your head is at right now."

"I know, I know," Jack grumbled, running both hands over his face, then leaning forward to rest his head with the flats of his hands pressing against his eyes. "Mac does this thing … he was an explosives tech when I met him, see … He doesn't even realize he's doing it I don't think. But when he's defusing something he repeats to himself over and over, 'no feelings about the bomb, no feelings about the bomb' and even when he's not doing it out loud, you can tell he's thinking it. Like, he's thinking a million other things too, but … It seems to work."

Cas smiled slightly. "Mac is very good at turning his brain into whatever he needs it to be. Sometimes it is just a calculator, sometimes, a super computer. And sometimes it is a white noise machine. Or a short wave radio for calling angels."

Then Cas chuckled. The idea seemed to amuse him greatly. Jack asked, "What?"

Cas just shook his head. "More often than not, his brain is all of those things at once, Jack. No wonder other people are constantly surprised by him. I think perhaps it is something only you have noticed. It took me some time to notice it, and I can read his mind."

Jack sat back up, smiling almost against his will. "Yeah, he's unique, that's for sure. Never seen a situation that got the best of him either …" He paused, realizing what Cas had done. "Thanks, Cas. I needed that."

"You are very welcome, Jack. I will tell you, the anger that is the undercurrent of your thoughts could protect you for now, protect Mac, just like he uses his old friend's voice to protect himself when there is a bomb or other danger and he needs to think. It is the emotion that is closest to your own training in denying your human feelings."

Jack nodded. That made all kinds of sense. While he presented as just cool as a cucumber on missions, what he actually usually felt was pissed off that they found themselves in danger once again. The only time he didn't feel much of anything was behind his scope, looking down the barrel at a target that had it coming.

Cas frowned.

Sam was still looking at them and asked, "What is it, Cas?"

Cas listened for a moment. "Mac is telling me … She is sending … the children out against us … Oh, this is not good at all."

"Children?" Dean asked, looking at Cas in the mirror and then glancing over his shoulder to verify the depth of worry he saw in the angel's expression.

Jack was already looking at Cas with growing horror, as though he knew what the angel was going to say. In reality, Jack was just overwhelmed with the enormity of trying to keep a lid on his feelings, to tamp down on his thoughts about the situation Mac was in, and the idea of kids being involved in the situation was just the cherry on top of the poisoned pie of having to eat all that at once.

Cas nodded slowly, carefully reviewing the picture Mac thought at him with such detailed and well-contained horror. "I've heard of this before, certainly. The children are not strictly possessed, La Llorona is simply controlling their minds. But it makes them as strong as demons if she lets them be. She subverts all their thoughts, but their bodies are just vulnerable human bodies. These children live. If we are not careful, and we encounter them in a fight, we could be responsible for their deaths."

"Jesus," Jack and Dean both mumbled simultaneously. Then Dean added. "We should be coming up on that cave if we read the map right … Cas, you gettin' any sense of how far off …"

"Dean!" Cas exclaimed with wide eyes, looking out the windshield.

Caught in the headlights, spanning the entire narrow dirt road, were something like ten small children, with linked hands, looking at the oncoming car with blank expressions. Dean hit the brakes, but skidded toward them on loose gravel. Without any other choice, he instinctively steered the car off the road to protect those kids.

He promptly hit a tree, jarring everyone in the car, and swearing a string of half-sensical curses about weeping women, and demons, and cousins and their genius partners, and angels, and everything else he could wedge between blush-worthy language. "You alright?" Sam asked him, unbuckling his seatbelt and grabbing his bag.

"No," Dean growled. "And neither is Baby." He started climbing out of the car, rubbing his head where he'd smacked it off the steering wheel.

"Maybe if you ever wore your seatbelt," Sam mumbled, climbing out too.

The car wasn't badly off. They could fix it with no difficulty and it was still clearly roadworthy. Sam was a lot more concerned about the line of kids who were still standing with their hands linked. They hadn't really moved when Dean nearly mowed them down. They were looking in the direction of the car now though. One girl, with perfect blunt-cut white blond hair, released the hands on either side of her and stepped toward them.

"Like Children of the goddamned Corn," Jack said under his breath, leaning against the car for a second when he saw the glowing whites of the child's eyes.

"You need to go," she said in a flat, menacing voice.

"We can't do that, sweetheart," Dean said, like he thought he was just talking to a little girl of seven or eight instead of the avatar for a primitive goddess.

"Well, now," Jack interjected, at least a little proud of himself for how natural he sounded. "We can go, we definitely can once we have everyone together; but see, our friend is here, too. And until he's with us, you're stuck with us, honey."

Jack didn't manage to sound like he was talking to a kid. His statement took on a hard edge and the child actually took a step back, cocking her head at him like she was confused.

"You are not suffering. Tell me why."

He strode several steps closer before Cas's hand on his arm stopped him from getting within the child's reach. He felt Sam and Dean flank them, too. "Because I'm too angry that you took him to feel much of anything else right now."

Dean and Sam started to move off, and out of the corners of his eyes, Jack could see they were trying to set up for an exorcism. They knew it might not work since these kids weren't possessed in the strictest sense of the word, but it was worth a shot.

A small boy, this one with dark hair and a tiny, flute-like voice, joined the girl. "You are supposed to suffer, to worry. That is your purpose."

"Sorry, kids," Dean said from behind Jack. "He's not the one who's going to suffer."

Dean and Sam started murmuring the words for an exorcism.

"Nah," Jack said taking another step toward the kids. "I'm not going to suffer, and neither is my friend."

"Oh, no?" the little girl asked. She smiled at them.

Jack froze.

A moaning wail of unfathomable pain reached their ears and it became a screaming crescendo very quickly.

Cas gripped Jack's elbow firmly, not letting him advance further. "Sam, Dean, you are not going to be successful with that spell. Allow me to driver her out of these children. Then we can retrieve Mac."

Cas had to practically force Jack behind himself, but he took a step toward the children once that was accomplished. "I can help you," he said patiently. "You belong at home with your families."

"Their pain is delicious," the little girl said with a sneer.

Cas took another careful step.

With no warning whatsoever, the little girl raised her hand to her mouth and tore at it savagely with her teeth.

Cas paused. "Do not harm this child further," he warned.

This time the little girl's smile was bloody. She dipped the fingers of her uninjured hand into the blood.

Another chilling cry echoed from behind the kids.

"Mac!" Jack shouted, his efforts to just stay angry beginning to falter.

The bloody smile grew.

She drew a familiar symbol on the pale pink front of her dress. "Bye-bye, angel."

Her good hand opened and closed in a childish wave and her bloodied hand pressed to the symbol.

"No!" Sam and Dean shouted together. A shockwave rippled outward from her, flattening everyone there, including the kids.

Jack was the first one to pick himself up, shaking his head to clear it. "Cas? Cas!" he yelled, thinking Cas was probably the best hope he had of getting Mac home in one piece.

"No good, dude," Dean said, getting back to his feet and helping Sam up. "She just banished him. Hard saying when he'll be able to make it back. Or if he won't get distracted by some crap in Heaven."

The brothers helped Jack to his feet. Another pained scream came from the cave they could now see in the moonlight. This time Jack couldn't identify the voice as Mac's. There was too much anguish in it.

Regardless of the shouts of the Winchesters, Jack started to take off at a run toward the cave. Compassion stopped him at the line of children scattered on the ground. They were starting to stir, and Jack saw when the first one opened its eyes that they were no longer glowing with the foreign invader's power.

The first to sit up was a little boy who immediately started to wail, "I want my mommy! Mommy, mommy, where are you?"

Jack dropped down into a squat next to the child. "Hey, there. It's okay, kiddo. We'll get you your mommy. I promise … Dean, Sam!" The Winchesters arrived at his side a second later. "One of you call the cops and emergency services. One of you come with me. I don't give a good goddamn which one does what," he said curtly. "If we don't have Cas we need backup."

Sam began, "Jack, calling the cops before it's all over is a bad …"

Jack stood, cutting him off. He found that none of the panic he'd been feeling before, even that which he'd been carefully concealing under anger was present anymore. Everything looked and felt perfectly clear, just like it did when he was looking down a scope.

"I don't care. We are going to need an ambulance, hell, more than one, and somebody is gonna have to find out who these poor kids belong to." There was another scream. Jack's jaw hardened. "And that kid isn't gonna wait anymore for help. I'm goin' after Mac. You do what you think you have to, but there better be help here when I get him out."

"I've got this," Sam said with a nod, pulling out his cell phone and sitting down on the ground so the little boy who was still sobbing for his mother could climb into his lap.

Dean gave a short nod, looking down at Sam in the middle of the group of kids, all just starting to wake up. Yeah, this was much more of a Sammy situation. Dean reflected, he probably wasn't the greatest with kids if Sam's comments about his half-assed parenting were any indication. Sam on the other hand seemed to have a gift.

"I've got your back." Dean affirmed

"Good," he nodded and headed toward the cave, drawing his weapon, not necessarily because he thought it would be useful, but because it calmed him to hold it.

Dean followed close behind, getting out the high-pressure water gun full of holy water that Mac had crafted before he disappeared.

When they reached the mouth of the cave a few moments later, it erupted in blue flames. They heard a distinctly inhuman scream.

"Mac!" Jack called out, hoping the scream hadn't been his partner's.

"Jack!" he heard over the roar of the fire. Mac's voice sounded weak but entirely his own.

They couldn't see inside to confirm, but no matter how rough the kid's voice sounded, from the other sounds coming from behind the fire, Mac had somehow managed to break free, and all hell was breaking loose.


	13. Chapter 13

"Mac!" Jack roared over the sound of the fire and the suddenly blustering wind encircling the mouth of the cave.

He hadn't shouted hoping for an answer, but he got one anyway. "Jack!"

He looked at Dean, his face a war of horror at how weak his partner sounded, and dizzying relief that he was alive at all. "We've gotta get in there, cuz," Jack said desperately.

Dean eyed the magical fire with concern. Dean gave the barest shake of his head as he mentally admitted defeat to himself. "Jack I don't know …"

Suddenly Jack had him by both arms, shaking him just a little. It wasn't violent, but through the strength of his hands Dean could feel that it could be.

Dean WInchester didn't worry about too many people being able to so much as rattle his cage. Right now he was pretty sure if he finished the sentence "I don't know what to do," Jack would knock him on his ass, and it wouldn't even slow Jack down.

Instead of finishing his thought, he tried, "I've never seen this kind of fire before, Jack."

He didn't add that it felt hotter than Hell, or that he could speak about that literally.

Jack let him go and was looking around sort of frantically, like the answer was in the dark around them. There was a loud crash from inside the cave and enough shouting, screaming, and otherworldly moaning that it sounded like the gates of hell had been battered down and everything from below was on its way out.

Dean held up his hands in a sort of helpless gesture.

Jack shook his head, zipped his jacket, and plunged through the flames, screaming at the top of his lungs as he did so. He wasn't sure if it was in anticipation of the pain he knew was coming, his fear at what he knew had to be behind the fire, or some wild-eyed hope that maybe it would scare whatever was waiting for him.

Dean looked into the flames with disbelief for a moment. "Son of a bitch!"

Then he pulled his hands inside his coat, thinking ruefully that at least his crazy cousin had the benefit of a leather coat before he dove into the inferno.

"Son of a bitch," he said again, but this time it was with a sort of quiet resignation. He took a deep breath and followed Jack into the flames.

There were several minutes of smokey painful confusion. "Ow, goddamn it; quit hittin' me," finally could be heard distinctly over all the coughing and choking.

"Sorry, cuz," came Jack's voice through the noise and smoke. "You were pretty much totally on fire for a sec."

"Can you see anything?" Dean asked squinting through the heat and the burning smoke.

"Not much," Jack admitted, groaning as he got to his feet and held out his hand to help Dean up. Damned fool had followed him in in nothing more than that cotton Army surplus coat, that was now riddled with holes. As Dean grasped his hand Jack gasped in pain, feeling blisters he hadn't realized he'd gotten (either pushing through the fire or beating out the flames all over Dean) burst. But, in spite of it, he got Dean to his feet. Jesus. He should have been more sympathetic to Mac when he'd burned his hands a while back. Just that fleeting thought about Mac and his pain, brought Jack's attention swiftly back to the present. Preventing more of it was why they were here.

"C'mon, man, let's go," Jack said, as he started feeling his way forward. "Mac! Buddy, we're here," he called out.

He could hear distant coughing and then, very quietly, "Jack, I'm here, but she's …"

Jack missed whether or not Mac said anything else.

Suddenly something large, and solid, and icy cold knocked him flat and he was rolling on the floor, grappling with someone or something that felt better than twice his size. From the nearby sounds of struggle, Dean was doing the same thing.

Jack could tell from the sound, and the fact that the smoke was clearing that for whatever reason the insanely hot blue fire that they'd fought their way through was going out. And because of it, the wind outside was starting to carry off some of the dense smoke.

A strong blow to the side of his head made Jack's ears ring and he could see for the first time what he was fighting. It was a shadow. Nothing more. It had the vaguest shape of a large man, but if he couldn't feel it raining down punishing punches on him, he would have thought there was no substance to it.

After a moment's additional struggle Jack felt the thing's weight decrease and he got the vague sense that it had started raining in the cave. Then Dean crowed, "Whoohoo, that's right shadow puppet, you don't like holy water either, do ya?"

Other shadows were haphazardly throwing stones now, but with each spray from the pressurized water gun Mac had made, they seemed to shrink, to lose a little more of their ability to affect matter.

Dean passed Jack another of Mac's inventions; the salt gun he'd made from PVC. As the men advanced, peppering the entities with holy water and salt, the creatures finally blended back into the shadows of the cave, until that's all they were.

Now that the shadows were gone, along with their weird low moaning, and the fire had ebbed, the guys could hear emergency services sirens approaching in the distance. But other than the distant keening of sirens, the night had gone very silent.

Suddenly a furious bellow split the quiet.

Dean and Jack shared a look.

That wasn't Mac.

They raced toward the back of the cave, their path lit only by the flickering remains of the pale blue fire.

When they turned the corner, there were torches illuminating the cavern in front of them. At the mouth of it, several small children, who had clearly been sentries were slumped on the ground. Jack's first instinct was to kneel down and see if they were okay, but he was stopped short by the site in the middle of the well-lit circular room.

Mac was on his back on the floor, doing his best to prop himself up on his elbows and use his hands, as well as pushing with his feet, to back away from the creature advancing on him. But … he was covered with blood. His shirt was torn to shreds, and at least ten deep cuts were visible on his arms, and through the tears in his shirt, all over the front of him.

"You can't use me to hurt him," Mac said, sounding breathless. "He's too smart for that, too good at what he does. And I told him you'd try. So he's prepared. Jack's …" Mac stopped to cough then. There was no more smoke, it just sounded like the desperate attempt from his lungs to get the air they needed into them. "Jack's a regular Boy Scout."

The thing that was advancing on him made Jack's blood run even colder than the sight of his partner's pale, clammy skin and weak breathy voice. It had the vaguest form of a woman. But it's flesh appeared to be rotting off its bones, it's white gossamer garment looked like nothing more that sodden spider webs, and it's tangled matted black hair hung down over its face.

"I feel his pain even now, little one. And I told you, if you will not let me in, not let me help you not to feel, I will happily feast on your pain as well."

A snort of something that sounded very like laughter, though Jack couldn't see Mac's face. "Well, then I imagine I'm delicious candy right now …" He breathed heavily for a moment, and Jack, frozen with horror, could hear the labor of it. "But I won't be for long … And I'm telling you … It doesn't matter if you think you can't die … Jack will find a way … He will … He always does."

That, if nothing else that was happening, twisted his heart to a near standstill in his chest. He couldn't just look at this unfolding any more. "Yeah, I will," he said, and despite how utterly devastated by Mac's physical condition part of him was, the old, cold steel he'd called upon so many times in the heat of battle was in his voice.

When the creature lifted its head, Jack's immediate impulse was to take a step back. He even heard a slight catch in Dean's breath as the thing revealed its face.

The creature's eyes … well, they weren't eyes. There were black, sunken, shriveled holes where eyes should be, including a third one in the middle of its pale decomposing rest of its face was elongated, with strange cavities in it, putting Jack in the mind of a partially desiccated horse or cow skull. And its mouth … That was the real horror here. It's jaw appeared to be like that of a giant constrictor, able to unhinge to swallow its prey.

Mac seemed inured to it at this point. He was looking at the thing like it was just part of the scenery. "Jack, stay where you are," Mac said, and despite sounding exhausted and winded, he sounded steady, normal, just Mac working the problem. "Did you guys bring the stuff to bind her with?"

"Do not speak to him, child," the creature ordered. "Your time with him is over. And you belong to me now."

"Pretty sure I don't belong to anybody," Mac managed, backing up a little further. "Did you bring it?" he repeated.

"Yeah, bud. Yeah we did, but …"

"I know," Mac answered Jack's unspoken assertion that they couldn't exactly bind this thing while it was advancing on any of them, in full control of its power. "Gimme a minute."

The creature took another slow measured step toward Mac and he pushed back with his feet again. Then, with a herculean effort, he started to stand, and moved as though he would lean on the cave wall.

Infuriated that he was still fighting, the creature allowed it's terrifying mouth to gape open, prepared to swallow her victim whole. A voice that came from somewhere other than her mouth, was maybe even rasping directly in their minds said, "My property, all the little ones belong to me. Mine were taken. I will take until my grief is sated."

"Revenge on the innocent seems kinda petty for a supposed goddess," Dean snapped, stepping toward her. Jack put a hand on his arm. If Mac said wait, there had to be a reason. He hoped. Maybe the kid was just delirious from blood loss, but he didn't sound delirious.

Mac put out a hand to steady himself and took several faltering steps into the shadows. "You want to claim me, you're gonna have to come for me. You're not getting back in my head and making me do what you want."

The challenge in his voice, the cocky smirk Jack could hear, though he couldn't see it since Mac was in the shadows facing away from him, gave Jack an instant bright spark of hope.

"Have it your way, child," Llorona hissed. "Your pain is worth the effort. You've so much of it naturally."

She took one more lumbering step toward Mac and froze, her scream building and filling the cave before they even realized that's what they were hearing. They covered their ears against the terrifying power of it as a circle of flames sprang to life around her.

Dean recognized the Devil's Trap for what it was and sprung into action, pulling the items for a binding out of the bag that he had almost forgotten he was wearing.

His half a plan finally successful, Mac started to just sink down to the ground, but Jack was right there, holding him up. "Hey, there, bud. Let's get you outside."

Mac nodded, leaning against Jack. "Yeah, outside is better." He paused to take a step. Even supported by Jack, staying upright was difficult. "Where's Cas?"

Jack sighed. "He got banished. So, no lovely angel light to just fix you up. But we got help on the way, kid. We could hear the ambulances and cops coming before we got to you."

"I'll take what I can get," he said, then he stumbled.

"Yeah, sorry about this, kid," Jack said, picking him up in a fireman's carry and moving as quickly as he could to get Mac outside to what he hoped were already waiting paramedics.

Mac didn't say anything more until they got outside. Jack set him down on the ground. He figured with the shape Mac was in, it was better to let help come to them. Besides he really didn't want to trip and fall carrying him in the dark and he could see flashlights approaching, hear voices calling out to each other.

Mac finally quietly said, "Thanks, Jack. I really can't stand up anymore. I'm at shortness of breath, rapid heart rate, shallow rapid breathing. I'm dizzy …" he trailed off. "I've been trying to figure out how much blood I lost, trying to calculate my odds of … I've got at least early stage hypovolemic shock, I'm pretty certain and …"

"Hey, there Dr. House, leave the differential to the professionals, please and thank you."

Mac managed a short laugh. "You bet, pal."

Sam was just leading several local cops and EMS people to the mouth of the cave. He looked at Jack who gave a little nod. "I think the woman ran off that way," Sam said to the cop nearest him, indicating the dark woods, and doing his best innocent bystander impression.

Jack called out, "There's more kids inside. Our friend is in there trying to help them."

Dean came out then, carrying two small children in his arms. He met Jack's eyes for a moment and just blinked. La Llorona was taken care of. "There's at least three more kids inside," Dean told the nearest cop, as paramedics finally reached Mac. The police officer was already on his radio calling for more back up.

Paramedics had surrounded Mac by then and he was doing his best to answer their very basic questions, but was starting to struggle to stay awake. Jack just stepped in and filled in the information they wanted as the got on the move back toward the waiting ambulance.

The Winchesters and the police could take care of the aftermath here for now.

All Jack currently cared about was making sure Mac was okay.

One of the cops stopped him as he was about to climb into the back of the ambulance with his partner. "We're going to need a statement at some point, sir so if you could …"

"I think you know where to find me," Jack replied rolling his eyes and indicating the large vehicle covered in flashing lights.

"Those are some nasty burns you've got there, sir," the cop observed after seeing Jack's hand wave in the air.

"Then I'm headed to the right place," he replied.

He climbed in, trying to make himself as small as possible, so as not to be in the way. On the short trip to the small local hospital, once things had quieted down a little, Jack had a chance to check in directly with Mac. "How ya doin', kid?"

"Been better," Mac replied with a small smile. He blinked slowly a few times. "Did you guys get … is she ..?"

"Yeah, bud, Dean took care of it. How'd you make that trap anyway? We never got around to …"

"I studied the symbol in Sam's book. I was hoping I memorized it correctly." He had a moment where he looked pretty pleased with himself. "Guess I did."

"How did you make it though with …"

"I was in there for a while. She wasn't right on top of me the whole time."

"Yeah, but she took away all your stuff."

"I drew it with my blood, Jack," he said matter-of-factly.

"So that's why you're a quart low, huh?" he teased, sounding pretty normal he thought, considering he wished there was a way to unbind that thing just so he could kick her around a little, and wondering if things like that could bleed, because maybe she'd like to know what having to try to save yourself by writing in your own blood felt like.

Mac shrugged, missing the teasing tone. "I was already bleeding all over anyway." He shivered.

"Maybe took the whole improvise and use what you've got thing a little too far this time," Jack observed, trying to keep a lid on his worry and knowing he was doing a terrible job of it.

"Since I got away from her and we're on our way to put back what she took, I think maybe I took it just far enough."

Mac sighed and closed his eyes. His head was pounding and the sirens were loud.

Jack just squeezed his hand in response.

Mac opened his eyes again for a minute, "I'm good, Jack. I'm gonna be fine."

"Yeah, course you are," Jack said with a firm nod.

"You've got that this is worse than Italy face, Jack."

"No, I do not."

"You sort of have the this is worse than Cairo tone too."

"Hey, we don't talk about that."

Satisfied that Jack wasn't totally freaking out, Mac closed his eyes again. He smirked a little when he heard one of the EMS guys ask Jack, "What about Cairo? You mean like in Egypt?"

"What happens in Cairo stays in Cairo, buddy," Jack replied.

Mac let himself doze off. He was safe, and he had a feeling Jack was going to be extra vigilant about him staying that way for a little while.


	14. Chapter 14

Mac had sort of hazy memories of riding in the ambulance, arriving at the hospital, and he knew he'd been sleeping off and on. It felt like a lot of time must have passed based on the number of times his brain told him he'd been awake, but his surroundings informed him that it wasn't even morning yet, so it couldn't have been long, he thought.

The hospital room was now dim, but not dark. There was a low light on over the head of his bed. Jack was still where Mac last remembered him, passed out in the chair next to him, with his feet propped up on the edge of the bed. He vaguely remembered a nurse chewing Jack out about that at one point.

He didn't have the energy to explain to her at the time, but Jack's hands were bandaged and probably really painful, since Mac remembered asking what had happened and Jack had told him honestly that he'd gotten burned. After what happened, whether Jack was letting anyone in on it or not, he'd be in a fit of worry about his partner.

If Jack couldn't just sit there with his hand on Mac's arm (what he usually did if things had gone seriously sideways), then he was going to rest his feet on Mac's bed. If anyone tried to move the bed or Mac (including if Mac decided to move himself for some reason), that would wake Jack up in an instant.

The nurse thought Jack was just being a pain in the ass. Mac knew better, but he supposed that was a fair conclusion if the guy had been the one who'd had to patch up Jack's hands.

Mac squinted at the clock on the wall across the room. He couldn't make out the hands well enough to tell the time. His vision was still blurry and his head still felt vaguely swimmy. It seemed like it might be very early morning.

He didn't want to wake Jack, but he needed to change position. He carefully moved to turn onto his side, bracing himself so as not to jostle Jack's strategically positioned feet, and something started beeping. _Damn it_ , he thought as Jack jolted awake.

"Hey there," Jack said immediately, like he'd been wide awake the whole time. "Where ya goin' buddy?"

Mac shook his head, with a wry smile, as he tried to untangle whatever wire was currently causing the alarm to go off. IV, heart monitor, pulse oximeter, and discarded oxygen that was sitting next to him. "Just rolling over, I promise … But they've made it a little complicated."

Jack got up and walked around the bed to the monitor and entered something into the touch screen. The beeping subsided. "There, that oughta keep the staff outta here for ya."

"How'd you do that?" Mac asked, thinking that was a good trick to know for future reference.

"I watched the nurse put in the code the last time you pulled your oxygen off." Jack grinned at him. "She was real grumpy about it too. You told her off a little."

"I did not," Mac said, his expression somewhere between skeptical of Jack's story, and embarrassed that he was probably telling the truth.

"Ya did, but don't feel too bad about it. Your night nurse makes the minions back at Phoenix Medical look like Santa's elves by comparison."

"Making me glad I've slept through most of her shift, for sure." Finally situating himself comfortably on his side facing Jack, he asked, "How are your hands?"

"Makin me feel real bad about that fist bump I landed on you in New Orleans for sure," Jack shrugged.

"They give you anything for it?"

"Nah," Jack replied. Not that he hadn't been offered pain medication. He just had no intention of taking any while he felt the need to look out for Mac. And he wasn't quite ready to tell Mac yet, but the kid had been needing a fair amount of looking after.

"Sam and Dean okay?"

Jack smiled gently. "They're good, bud. They're off getting rid of that nice box you made to bind that thing up ... This's the third time you've asked. "

"Oh," he said, trying to wrack his brain for what else he might have said that he just didn't remember. "How about all those kids? … I asked that already, too, didn't I?"

Jack nodded. "At least ten times. But that one I more than understand."

Mac had been pretty out of it, but that was the one thing that seemed to ground him, hearing the kids were alright, and that they were no longer under La Llorona's control. Jack couldn't decide if it was Mac's innate protective instinct that kept him worrying about those kids, or how horrifying his experience had been with them while La Llorona had been using them. It didn't seem to matter much though. He just needed to hear it again.

"They're all gonna be okay. A couple of them are still here too, downstairs in Pediatrics. A little dehydrated, definitely hungry, but they don't remember anything, so that's good."

"That _is_ good," Mac agreed. He was thoughtful for a moment. "What are we telling the cops?"

"As little as possible," Jack answered. "Basically a crazy woman was hurting people. When we found you, she ran away. Your injuries were similar to the bodies they found." Jack stopped and swallowed hard, thinking Mac had been too damned close to being a statistic of that creature, too. "You should probably just claim you don't remember anything. That'll be easier."

Mac nodded. He didn't particularly want to talk about what happened to him, anyway. "Cops gonna be here this morning?" he asked, sounding very tired again.

"I think you can probably count on today to just rest again, kiddo, but they'll probably come tomorrow."

"I won't still be here tomorrow," he said, frowning. Mac had missed the 'again' in Jack's last statement, a detail that was not lost on Jack.

"We are not gonna start having this argument. You're gonna be here until somebody in a white coat says you can be somewhere else, ya hear?"

Mac gave Jack a momentary glare and then turned onto his back again and raised the head of the bed. "Realistically there's no good reason for me to hang around here, you know."

"You mean other than the IV and all the monitors you're hooked up to? And the fact that you almost bled to death? Other than that stuff, right?"

Mac sighed. "Yeah, other than that." Then he gave Jack a little grin. "I've already been here most of the night. That should be good enough."

"You've been here about a day and a half, bud," Jack amended gently. "And you've slept through most of it."

"Wait, no ... I ... I slept through a whole day?"

"Pretty much, kiddo."

Suddenly, Mac's face brightened. "Well, then I definitely ought to be able to leave later."

"Mac, are we really gonna do this again?"

This time he frowned. "Again? I've asked about leaving already, too?"

"Every time you've woken up, Mac. Slow down and let yourself think a little. It'll come to you. You just keep waking up, ready to go a million miles an hour like you usually do, and your body knows you're not ready is all."

Mac breathed slowly in and out, closing his eyes for a couple of minutes. He was almost dozing off, when a flood of memories from the last two days crowded into his head. His eyes flew open. It was much easier to focus on recalling what had happened since his rescue than to let in anything about his captivity.

"Okay, I do remember now." Jack gave an encouraging nod. "And I definitely should be able to get out of here."

"What makes you say that?" Jack asked. Previously Mac hadn't stuck with that train of thought long enough to come up with any coherent reasons. Jack wasn't about to let him go anywhere. The doctor said he should be monitored for a couple of days. But hearing Mac sounding like Mac again was a huge relief. It had been a lot of delirium and nightmares up to this point.

"Well, I've been treated, right? Like all the usual stuff …"

"You got a transfusion, isometric fluids," Jack began to explain.

"Isotonic, Jack," Mac corrected and Jack grinned in response. Mac took that as encouragement. "You know there's some really interesting studies going on regarding hyptertonic solutions and treatments that increase blood viscosity as viable alternatives to current protocols for hypovolemic shock. The statistics are promising that the new protocols could improve outcomes and reduce recovery times."

"But seein' as how you didn't have any hyperactive whatever, your recovery time is whatever the doc says it is."

"Which shouldn't be more than twenty-four hours. Which I've already been here for more than apparently. That means they should discharge me this morning."

"Says who?" Jack's feet went back up on the bed and he settled back in his chair, making it clear he had no plans on moving for a while.

"Everybody," Mac asserted. "Okay, not everybody. Probably hardly anybody. But I'm good, Jack. Just tired. We can talk to the cops, get out of here, get home, and I'll rest all weekend, I promise. You can stay with us and hover as much as you want."

Jack had to hand it to him, for a guy who'd been less than half awake ten minutes ago he was pretty convincing, if he was dealing with someone who wasn't familiar with Mac's particular brand of puppy dog eyes. Unfortunately for him, Jack was very familiar with it. However, he wasn't above a compromise that might make Mac marginally happier.

"Tell you what, I've gotta call Matty anyway. I'm tellin her the same thing I'm tellin the cops, by the way … and I'll ask her if we could maybe transfer you …"

"No, Jack. Not to Phoenix Medical. Home. Today. I want out of Texas and I don't want anyone else deciding whether or not I can even get up and move," he stopped himself. His tone had gotten very strident and Jack's face had the look of sudden realization.

"Okay, kid. I get it," Jack said quietly, then he paused. "You've had more than your share of being kept someplace you didn't want to be to begin with this last year."

Mac shivered again, and Jack wasn't sure if it was another chill, or simple memory that did it. "Yeah," he agreed, this time almost in a whisper.

Jack put his feet back down on the floor. "How about we see what the doc says when she shows up this morning and if it's totally unreasonable, I'll sneak you outta here myself?"

Mac smiled a little at that. "Deal … I guess."

"So maybe since it's only about 3:30, you could get a little more sleep so you don't look so damned tired when she gets here? Because I'm here to tell you she's not gonna let you go today. But the way you look at the moment, she might not want to let you out of here for a week."

Mac was thoughtful for a minute. Jack looked tired, too. Of course, Mac knew from experience that trying to sleep with the pain of burns was not an ideal experience for restorative slumber. And, he reminded himself, it had now been a couple of days. Jack was probably at the shit-this-still-hurts-but-now-it-also-itches-like-the-very-devil stage of things. Besides if he'd been waking up not entirely coherent and trying to bail, Jack probably hadn't gotten much rest regardless.

"Yeah. Okay," he agreed. He smirked when Jack's boots came back up onto the bed. "But I'm gonna talk her into letting me leave today."

"I am sure you'll do your best, bud," Jack said with a mock-exasperated sigh, before folding his arms across his chest, leaning his head back, and closing his eyes, making it clear that for now at least, he considered the conversation over.

Mac sighed. He didn't really feel like going back to sleep.

Now that he was awake and he realized how much time he'd been in and out of consciousness, he just wanted his brain back in fully functioning order. And he didn't much want to risk more of the dreams that were dancing just on the edges of his memories. But his head did still hurt a little. So he closed his eyes.

Of course the dreams came.

Mac wondered if he'd ever again sleep without seeing La Llorona and the images of Hell she'd shown him.

0-0-0

Dean stuck his head in the door of Mac's hospital room. It was after lunch, but there was a full untouched tray of food off to the side of Mac's bed. Mac was asleep, looking pale and somehow a lot younger than he appeared when wide awake. Jack, sitting in the chair next to the bed, thumbing through a Fish & Wildlife magazine currently looked about ten years older.

"Hey, cuz," Dean said quietly, pulling the other visitor's chair up next to Jack. "How's our boy here?"

Jack frowned deeply. "Okay, I guess. He's uh, having a hard time staying awake. The doc thinks … well, she said some of its physical for sure, he's runnin a bit of a fever and whatever, but nothin serious. His labs are okay and whatever. She thinks maybe it's just self-protective sleep, that whatever happened to him was so traumatic he's just not ready to deal with it."

"Has he been awake much?" Dean asked with real concern.

"Oh, yeah. He was up again just a little bit ago, tryin' to talk the doc into letting him outta here."

"How'd that go?" Dean smirked. Mac looked like he belonged right where he was, but Dean certainly understood the urge to ditch the body shop asap if you happened to find yourself there.

Jack shook his head. "She agreed with every word he said, and pretended like she was going to get the paperwork."

"She give him something to knock him out?"

"Nah, he just dozed back off." Jack sighed. "He remembers everything now when he wakes up at least. So I imagine when he wakes up again he's gonna be pissed that she actually didn't have any plans on discharging him ... Way my luck is goin, she'll be off duty when it happens so he'll be mad at _me_."

Jack was trying to make his tone light, but Dean not only knew Jack pretty well, he also knew that tone because he used it so frequently himself. He put a hand on his cousin's shoulder. "I'm so sorry I got him involved in this Jack."

"I appreciate it, man, but we saved twelve little kids. I can't be upset about that, and I know Mac's not either. Even when he wasn't remembering things between waking up he kept asking about them. Now that he remembers, he keeps asking for updates on how they're doin."

"Yeah, well, he's a good guy," Dean said. He squeezed Jack's shoulder again before leaning his elbows against his thighs. "I was worried he might be having a hard time."

"Yeah?" Jack said, a little surprised that their talking hadn't caused Mac to stir.

"When something like that … when it gets in your head … when something from Hell touches you ... it does things." Dean shifted uncomfortably.

"Like what?" Jack asked. He wanted to sound angry, but all he sounded was apprehensive.

"Leaves scars," Dean replied matter-of-factly. "But to get as far as scars, you gotta know, it starts out … as open wounds."

Jack just frowned at his cousin.

"So in a way, Jack … in a very real way … Mac's still bleedin, man."

Jack swallowed hard and his throat had gone so dry listening to Dean speak there was an audible click. His voice sounded thin. "You showed up to tell me this … And I know you know how I feel about this kid … I'm guessin' you've got a suggestion?"

"Sam's workin' on it. I just wanted to come by and let you know, I got him hurt, so I won't quit until he's okay, alright?"

Jack glanced at him. "Thanks, man."

Dean sat with him for a few more minutes, then he silently got to his feet, patted his cousin on the shoulder again, and left.

0-0-0

Mac sighed. It was dark again. He knew it without opening his eyes. So much for 'I'll be back with your walking papers in fifteen minutes Mr. MacGyver'.

To be fair since he'd passed back out within five minutes of the doctor leaving and pretty clearly slept the whole day away (or had he? He didn't trust his own memory at the moment) humoring him had probably been the way to go.

He felt eyes on him again. Jack really needed to go get some actual sleep. And he definitely needed to stop doing the hover and watch his partner sleep thing. He thought he'd broken Jack of that habit after the whole nerve gas incident. Time to revisit the 'I'm a grown-assed man and I don't need a goddamned binky' conversation.

At first he'd appreciated Jack being there to ground him when he'd first started his strange bouts of half delirious waking. Now he was coherent; he just felt miserable, and knowing Jack was hanging around making himself miserable, too, wasn't helping. Mac had to admit that he was a little freaked out that he still felt so damned awful; he'd lost blood before and not felt this wonky. He'd been more with it after Lake Como, in fact. But that didn't mean Jack needed to wear himself out while Mac slept off this incident.

He was going to tell Jack to go back to the motel and get some real sleep. He would also promise to stay here until the doctor thought leaving was a good idea. He might not mean it, but he thought he felt enough like himself to sell it to Jack.

Mac peeled his eyes open.

He sucked in his breath is surprise. "Hey, Cas. Where's Jack?"

Cas smiled softly. Of course that was the boy's first concern.

"As soon as I got back, I healed his hands, and told the boys to make him eat something that wasn't hospital cafeteria food. My goal is for Jack Dalton to live a long fulfilling life. The way he has been eating the last few days is counter to that goal."

Mac shifted a little. He was stiff and sore from so much sleeping. "Good. Thanks, Cas."

Cas gave him a long look. He tried to ignore it, but wasn't quite able. He raised an eyebrow's worth of question at the angel.

"You are not setting any records for making me feel encouraged about the length of your existence either, Angus."

Mac bit back another request to be called Mac. "If I were dedicated to making you worry, I'd have left this place already. In case you missed it when you were rifling through my thoughts like they're your underwear drawer, I don't exactly love hospitals."

"I hadn't noticed," Cas said, with perfect neutrality.

Mac snickered. Then he snorted. Then he out and out laughed. "You were just sarcastic. You did sarcasm, Cas!"

Cas nodded sagely. "I suppose I did." He paused, leaning toward Mac in the dim room, knowing Mac could see his face in the faint glow of the light of Heaven he carried with him. "Now all I have to concern me is you."

Mac shifted again, feeling uncomfortable scrutiny from the angel this time. "I'm okay, Cas … But if you wanted to heal up whatever has the doc keeping me here I'm the last guy who would complain."

Cas smiled at him gently. "Your physical injuries are easy to heal, Angus. And I am happy to take care of them, with all due haste."

Mac frowned. "But?"

Cas gave Mac a long look. It was uncomfortably like the looks Jack often gave him.

"Cas, c'mon."

Cas heaved a long sigh. It was weirdly unsettling to hear an angel sound so lost.

"Cas?" Mac's normally well concealed vulnerability bled into his tone.

"The emotional wounds of the things La Llorona showed you, did to you … those are deep and complicated. They are actually why you feel so poorly, why you have not recovered sufficiently to leave the hospital."

Mac thought for a moment, then nodded thoughtfully. "I'm being physically affected by the things she did to my mind."

Cas nodded. "Yes. You are." He paused for a minute then gave Mac an amused raise on a single eyebrow. "But being here makes you almost as uncomfortable as the things that force you to be. You are a complicated man, Angus."

Mac sighed. "Are you ever going to remember to just call me Mac?"

Cas smiled. "Perhaps." He thought for several long minutes. Mac started to feel a little sleepy again and was furious that that feeling had already returned. "Angus … Mac … Do you trust me?" Cas reached out and took Mac's hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze.

Mac frowned. "Don't do that." It had the sound of an order. "Tell me what you want to do, then I'll tell you if I'm okay with it."

Cas sat with that for a minute. Then he spoke, squeezing the young man's hand again. "I could heal what she has done, but you'll forget … That's the best way I can think of to …"

"No!" Mac snapped. Cas's eyes widened and Mac explained. "That's … You've read my thoughts, right?"

"Yes," Cas replied.

"So you know what happened to me last fall? When Murdoc took me … tortured me?"

There was a hesitation in Mac's words, but it was minimal.

"Yes, Angus … Mac … I know what he did."

"Then … You have to know making me forget, me not knowing what happened … that's the same … he tried to keep me from remembering … and I …" Mac's voice caught, strangled in his throat.

"I understand, but … She's harmed you, Mac. Irrevocably … Unless …"

"Will it just kill me, or something? Or can I get over it?"

Cas waited a minute. "You'll get over it eventually, but … It might mean you need to leave the work you do, find something else …"

"No!" Mac snapped. "I love my work, I'm good at it. I want a life outside it, God, just so much sometimes … but, I'm … It's important, that I do my job. It's real."

Cas squeezed Mac's hand again. "I understand." Mac's warm blue eyes caught his cool ones, and the desperate plea for help was in them, for all of Mac's efforts to keep it out. "There is something I can try … It would let you keep all of these memories, but would rob them of their power."

"Perfect," Mac said with assurance.

"The problem is … It could subvert your other thoughts. It would not erase your memories … I know you don't want that … but the things I let you see, could consume you … knowing what I know of you … The thoughts I can offer could have healing power, or they could destroy you."

Mac gave him his full attention. "What do you want to show me?"

Cas was torn between being honest, and warning Mac off. He liked him almost too much to allow him to take this risk. The Mac's expression demanded the full truth. He was brave enough to benefit from this, if anyone was.

"I would show you your mother's Heaven. And it will either allow you to move on from this pain, or it could destroy you."

Mac looked at him again, and the moment seemed to go on for a year. "Okay. Do it."


	15. Chapter 15

Jack had only been gone about twenty minutes, and he'd eaten at the fastfood place up the street with Sam and Dean. He thought it was a McDonald's but he didn't remember tasting anything. He'd left because Cas asked him for some time alone with Mac, not because he cared about eating something from outside. Hospital food was fine with him.

After about three bites he started to get the impression that Dean and Sam were more interested in just keeping him away from whatever Cas was up to than they were in feeding him. He inhaled what was left of his … burger, he was pretty sure … Crumpled up the paper and gotten to his feet.

"How about some ice cream?" Dean offered, rising to stand next to Jack.

"I'm good guys, thanks. I'm gonna get back. Once Cas has Mac all sorted out, we're going to have to figure out something to tell the doctor … We should probably talk it over before … Why do you guys both look like someone ran over your puppy?"

Same got up too. "Fixing Mac up might be a little more complicated than fixing your hands."

Jack nodded. "Yeah, I'm sure that thing messed with his head pretty good. I mean, I can see how rough it's had him feeling for myself. Mac's spent less time in a hospital for a bullet wound before, and the blood loss was pretty close to as bad. But Cas can heal him, right? That's what he said."

Dean could hear the near pleading in Jack's voice and he did want to make him feel better, but Sam had told Dean was Cas had said when he finally managed to summon him. This was not as easy as a laying on of hands, sharing a sliver of his grace.

Jack took their silence for what it was. "What aren't you two telling me?"

"Why don't you sit back down and we'll go through everything," Sam said, hoping his calm tone would have some effect on Jack. Cas didn't need a distraction from what he had to do right now.

"I don't think so. I think I'm gonna go on back and see if Mac needs anything."

Jack turned and headed out the door. Dean took a step, like he might try to stop him. Sam just shook his head. "Let him go, man. This is either gonna be okay or it won't. Maybe Jack should be there either way."

0-0-0

Jack's heart was beating too fast when he walked back into Mac's room. He was trying to tell himself that it was the pace he'd set hotfooting it back here when he realized he might not really know what was going on, but he knew that wasn't the case. It was fear, plain and simple. He was afraid for Mac, if only because of how evasive Sam and Dean had been in their answers.

Jack was stopped short by the sight of Cas sitting next to Mac's bed. It was a simple enough tableau; Mac was sleeping peacefully, and Cas was simply sitting there, holding one of his hands. But there was a faint glow about Cas that made him more visible in the dim room. That was enough to stop Jack and remind him that Cas was an angel. The deeply worried frown Cas was wearing was what really stopped him though.

Jack made his feet move again, slowly and quietly, settling into the chair next to Cas, looking at Mac's face, rather than at the angel.

"Is he alright?" Jack asked softly.

Cas's frown deepened. "I do not know."

"Why isn't he just better, why can't you just fix this, like you did for me?"

"You know why already, Jack," Cas said gently. "But I am trying to help him fix it himself, in a way."

"Cas, you might think you're explain' yerself, but it's not actually helping."

Cas nodded. "He would not let me make him forget, would not let me just build a wall in his mind between him and the things La Llorona did."

Jack nodded. He could see Mac rejecting that idea out of hand. Jack knew he was still bothered by the fact that he couldn't recall everything about his time as Murdoc's captive. It worried him a lot, kept him from sleeping well, too often. But there was a tentativeness in Cas's tone that worried Jack even more than he already had been.

"So what's the alternative?" he asked carefully.

"I am acting as a bridge … To Heaven. I am allowing him to see his mother."

"And that'll fix things?" Jack asked, hoping Cas would just agree and that this wasn't some new danger Mac was facing all alone.

Cas did nod. "It could." He paused, seeing if Jack would say anything else. When he didn't, something compelled Cas to be honest with him anyway. "It could also destroy his mind just as surely as La Llorona tried to."

Jack stood up abruptly. "What the hell are you doing it for then?"

Cas looked at Jack with something Jack first took as pity, but then saw how it was much more truly compassion. "The alternative was to leave him as he was, to see if perhaps he could recover on his own. I will tell you what I told him. He could. He very well could get back to something like normal on his own. But it would take a very long time. And it would not be possible for him to continue the life he is accustomed to. He'd have to leave his job, and truly give himself time and peace to come back, assuming that is possible at all. He did not want that. And the prognosis for a full recovery from those sorts of spiritual wounds is not good, Jack."

Jack was frowning deeply, shifting from one foot to the other with nervous tension. "So what's happening to him now?" Jack asked. Something was clearly happening. He could see Mac's eyes moving beneath his lids, then a crease in his forehead, then a single tear slipping from the corner of his eye.

"He is with his mother. For him to cope with the things in his mind, with the horror, he must have something good of equal or greater power. I don't know what that looks like. The energy just to allow his mind to travel there is almost too much for me to give, so I cannot see what is happening. He may only be able to see her, or he may be able to interact and feel the light of Heaven. He may just be there in some corner of her vast and endless personal Heaven all alone. I can't know. But I know it has worked to heal other humans. And that it is his best chance." Cas paused. "But, there is a risk that he may not …" Cas stopped at the look in Jack's eyes. "There is a risk."

Slowly Jack nodded. Accepting that Mac was on his own, that he might not come back (that's what Cas was trying to tell him, he thought, but he didn't want to hear those words out loud) was about the hardest thing Jack had ever had to swallow. It was almost worse than the times he'd known Mac was hurt badly, was in danger of dying. Because Jack knew just exactly what kind of dangerous labyrinth Mac could turn his own mind into.

He sighed.

Then he picked up the chair he'd been sitting in and carried it around to the other side of the bed. He reached out and took Mac's other hand. He'd done this before. Just hung on and willed Mac to come back from an edge no one seemed to think he would. He'd done it after Lake Como, certainly.

Cas was looking at him kindly. Finally, Jack spoke. "He'll come back, Cas. Better than ever. You just hold on. And so will I."

0-0-0

When Mac first opened his eyes, he felt a sinking disappointment.

He was still in a hospital room.

Then he blinked a few times and realized he was standing against the wall by the door. The room was painted a soft pink, bordered with white ducks. If that wasn't enough to make him recognize it as the maternity ward of the hospital in Mission City, the view of the mountains out the window would have.

In a chair under the window, looking altogether done in and in desperate need of a shave, sprawled his father, a much younger version than the last one he'd seen. In the bed, a woman who looked for all the world like a well-rested angel as far as he could tell.

"Mom," he whispered, feeling tears heat his eyes, but not particularly caring.

She glanced up and for a second her bright blue eyes locked with his.

Then it was like it had never happened. Her attention returned to the lumpy bundle in her arms. He recognized the blanket that swaddled the small form; pale yellow with little green bears. A tiny, fussy sound started coming from the little bundle.

All of Heaven's power to show her the things that made her happiest, and she was in a hospital room, holding her only child, all alone with him in the quiet. Mac started chewing his lip.

The fussing got a little louder and she tucked little Angus closer to her chest and started singing softly. The sounds of the distantly familiar lullaby, caused the lump that had been forming in Mac's throat to tighten almost unbearably. He closed his eyes, feeling the hot tears squeeze out.

He took a shuddering breath and opened them, only to find himself in his childhood backyard.

He was startled into an almost immediate laugh when he heard his mother's voice again. "Angus, don't you dare!"

A little blond boy of maybe three went pelting across the green grass toward huge mud puddle near the back gate, almost tripping over the cuffs of his too-long overalls.

"Angus!"

The little guy stopped for a split second and threw a devilish grin at the woman chasing after him. He let her almost catch up, then took off at a toddler's sprint toward the puddle. He pounced into the middle of it, slipped, and fell in the slippery mud right onto his backside, splashing his mother's jeans and white shirt, not to mention her little boy looked up at her as mud dripped down both their faces and their hair.

"Dirt!" he announced.

She nodded, laughing. "Yes, a lot of dirt. Are you ever going to learn how to stay out of trouble, Angus?" she asked, fondness clear all the way across the yard to where Mac was standing.

The little fellow shook his head earnestly, "Nope! Dirt!"

She laughed again and best to pick him up, balancing him on her hip as he stood. "And now, bath," she chuckled, heading toward the house.

"No, no, no, no!" he insisted, shaking his head so rapidly, muddy drops sprayed everywhere. "Dirt! Dirt!" He reached a grubby hand back toward the direction of the satisfyingly deep and messy puddle. His face looked ready to crumple into tears.

"How about bubbles instead?" his mother asked, laughter still in her voice.

"Apple bubbles?" he asked, angling to see her dirty face.

"Apple bubbles," she affirmed, opening their back door.

Mac was certain she looked at him again. He raised his hand, almost in a wave, then stopped and just watched them go inside, hearing her voice fade into the distance as she convinced little Angus that his apple bubble bath was an acceptable substitute to more playing in the mud.

Mac felt the lump in his throat ease a little. Such a simple thing, a little boy determined to play in the mud, but it made her happy. Happy enough that it was part of her Heaven. He smiled a little when he thought that although he didn't remember this specific occasion, he must have made her happy like that quite often. He had really liked the mud.

It seemed his whole childhood passed by in a few short blinks, the good parts of it anyway. And as he watched it, he noticed that his mother had started to look ill long before he'd ever realized it as a child. It had mostly been hidden behind her bright laughter, her ability to enjoy every little piece of his shenanigans, even when they did things like discolor the whole kitchen. Mac shook his head. He'd learned about the dangers of over pressurizing a homemade volcano rather young.

It felt like much too little time had passed before he saw his five year old self sitting in a hard plastic chair in a hospital hallway. His face was red and he was sniffling, but he wasn't crying at the moment. Across the hall, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, Mac frowned. Why would this moment of all things be in his mother's Heaven? Then he saw why.

Transparent and surrounded by a faint but lovely pinkish glow, the figure of his mother, looking young, and well, and not sick at all, sat down next to the devastated and forgotten little boy whose eyes were searching up and down the busy hallway, hoping his father or grandfather would come out of the room and take him away from here. He just wanted to go home where he could cry without people looking at him.

The faintly glowing form put her gossamer arms around the little boy and held him. From his place across the hall, Mac swallowed hard. She'd been there. She'd stayed to say goodbye, he thought. And he sort of remembered feeling that, feeling her there with him. He'd told his father about it later, but he'd barked that it was just his imagination. Mac hadn't argued with him. And he never told him about that feeling again, but Mac remembered having it more than once.

He watched those memories unfold in front of him now, like a movie. His tears were flowing freely now, but it was no longer because of the deeply cut laid to waste feeling he'd had since he last woke up in the hospital before Cas came and offered him this. It was the simple ache of how much he had missed her, and of seeing that her Heaven included the times she'd still been in his life, still watched him even though he couldn't know it.

He saw her smiling at them when he made friends with Bozer.

She sat clapping her hands at Christmases and birthdays as he opened gifts.

She covered her mouth like she had a terrible case of the giggles the day Penny Parker threw up on his shoes in biology lab.

She'd sat with him again on the porch steps after his father had left, after his grandfather had tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to make him feel better. Mac bit his lip, realizing he was actually smiling as her ghostly hands kept him from nearly cutting off his thumb with his brand-new-to-him Swiss Army Knife.

She'd stood next to his grandfather at his high school graduation.

She'd watched with smiling approval as he dazzled his friends and professors at MIT.

She'd given a proud, solemn nod when he'd sworn the oath of enlistment.

He watched her sit beside his younger self as he lay in his bunk, trying to hide his grief over Alfred Pena's death from the rest of his squad.

He laughed with her at the cocky swaggering fight he'd had with Jack when they first met. He couldn't miss her approving expression as Jack warmed up to the job of protecting her boy.

She had followed him everywhere. All those times he would have sworn he smelled her perfume, heard her gentle laughter … All those times he'd heard his father's voice telling him it was just his overactive imagination … She had been there. He closed his eyes, overwhelmed with gratitude that he actually hadn't grown up without a mother at all. After a moment, he opened them again, absently wiping tears from his face.

He found himself in a garden, decorated with chairs and flowers. He was standing in the middle of a blindingly golden day, clearly at a celebration of some sort. He felt a hand on his elbow, smelled the soft scent of her familiar lightly floral perfume. He turned and found his mother, still looking like she had when little Angus had jumped in that mud puddle, standing there beaming at him.

"Um … I wasn't sure you could see me," he managed, just to have something to say, since everything felt inadequate anyway.

"I always see you, Angus …" She gave him a mischievous grin. "I mean Mac, of course."

"I don't mind if you call me Angus," he offered quietly.

She took his hand and started leading him away. "You're your own man now, my love. I'll call you whatever you like." She paused. "Is it true you don't like to be called by your name because it makes you miss me? Did I go and ruin a lovely thing like your name by leaving you?"

He felt himself blush a little. "Don't feel bad about that … You couldn't help it … It's not really that anyway … I mean, okay, it sort of is, but also … I just like Mac. People called Dad MacGyver, too, and …"

"And you're still very angry with him, aren't you, Mac?"

He shrugged. "Sometimes … Do you know where he is?"

She nodded, then waved a hand like it wasn't important. "It may or may not serve you well to find him, Mac. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether or not to pursue that." She tugged his hand, moving him along.

"Where are we going? What's happening here? If there's a party I don't remember and it's going to make you smile like you have been every time you've remembered a party, I kind of don't want to miss it."

She laughed. "This celebration isn't for you to see."

"Why not?" he asked, vaguely disappointed, but also pleased because it seemed where ever he was going, she was going with him.

"Because for you, this hasn't happened yet. Can't have you peeking at the future, now can I? That's like sneaking into the attic to look for your Christmas presents."

He laughed again, blushing in earnest this time. "You knew I did that?"

"Of course I did, baby. You are much too like me for you to have ever kept a good secret from me. It's probably a good thing I've just been watching over you. I'd have known you were a spy the second I saw you in a tux for the first time."

He smiled almost shyly. "I never could keep a secret from you anyway."

When he saw where she was walking him toward he stopped, bracing his feet even as she tugged at his hand. It was a door, in the middle of the green grass, just standing there, waiting to be opened.

"C'mon now, Angus, I told you you can't see anymore here. It's time for you to go back."

He felt the urge to cry returning, not the sort of happy tears he'd been shedding for a while, but the ones that carried pain, and hopeless loneliness in them. "I don't think I want to."

"That's what your friend Cas was worried about when he offered that you come here."

Mac shrugged. "Yeah, I know, but …"

"Do you really think refusing to live your life because it's had some pain in it is a fitting culmination to it?"

There was a hint of reproach in her words now. The sort of tone she used to use if he'd managed to hurt himself doing something reckless.

He sighed. "No, but …"

She raised an eyebrow at him, inviting him to finish the thought he'd just swallowed whole.

"It's been nice not feeling alone. Nice having a family again."

"You always have a family, Angus. And they would be awfully put out if you didn't go home to them."

"I know … I do …"

"But?" She smiled at him. "Would you really want to explain yourself to Jack Dalton when he finds his way here someday?"

Mac snickered at the expression he could picture on Jack's face, of the lecturing tone he could all but hear. "Jack doesn't think he could ever get into Heaven. He says so all the time. And he actually believed in this place before all this."

She frowned at him, "Where else would a man with a heart like Jack Dalton wind up?"

"I've wondered that myself."

She pulled him into an embrace, quite suddenly. He hadn't been prepared for it. He found it strange to hug his mother and be taller than she was.

"Your time here has healed what that creature did to you," she said into his shoulder. Then she released him, reaching out her hand for the doorknob.

Mac smiled at her, but it was a sad smile, resigned. "You're going to make me leave, aren't you?"

She shook her head. "I'm going to open this door. Whether you walk through it or not is up to you."

He sighed heavily.

"Don't you want to go back? Catch up with these memories of mine so you can see what this big party is all about?"

He nodded slowly. "I do, but …"

She leaned closer to him then, dropping her voice into a whisper.

"I'm not supposed to tell, but I'll see you again. You'll be back, a long time from now if you play your cards right. And then we can walk in this memory together completely and laugh about how badly you wanted to know what it was."

He laughed. She never could keep a secret from him either.

"Will I remember this?"

She shook her head. "Probably not much of it, my love. It's too much. But it will drive out some of the other things that hurt to remember. And sometimes, in that place between awake and asleep, you'll see it, and you'll know I'm there with you, even if it's just for a minute."

She opened the door.

Mac peered through it, seeing exactly what he expected, a darkened hospital room. He was lying in the bed, his eyes closed, with Cas on one side of him, staring intently into his sleeping face, and Jack on the other, one hand holding his, his forehead resting on the bed next to their hands, mumbling under his breath. Mac smiled a little at the thought that much as he was having a talk with his mom about his present circumstances, Jack was probably trying to make a deal with his dad to fix it for him.

He knew what he had to do. He made up his mind to hug her one last time, determined that when he did he would hold onto that, make it a memory he could keep.

He blinked though and found himself gasping, eyes fluttering open, back in the bed he'd been viewing from a distance a mere second before.

Jack heard the change in his breathing and his head snapped up. He couldn't keep the ridiculously pleased grin off his face, "Hey, bud. How ya doin'?"

Mac blinked rapidly a couple of times, trying to get back the thought of where he'd just been, what he'd just been doing. It was important and he couldn't quite … He had to answer Jack though, ease some of the anxiety hiding behind the smile and darkening his kind eyes. "Okay, I think," he said quietly.

"How do you feel really, Angus?" Cas asked carefully, prodding for a more specific answer.

"Like I could sleep for a week, and maybe not have nightmares this time," he said honestly. Then he thought about it for a minute. "But you were going to do your angel healing thing. Did you … Can we go now?"

Cas smiled down at him. "Sleep first. You need it. And then yes, I suspect by morning an army of angels couldn't keep you here."

"'Kay," Mac mumbled agreeably, closing his eyes again. Sleep, real restful, no-nightmare sleep sounded great, even if it was still in a hospital bed. He wondered why he was sure he'd be able to sleep this time.

He heard both of them get up, Jack following Cas to the door, talking too quietly for him to hear. He felt vaguely worried that Jack might leave. He knew he told him often enough that he didn't need to always stay, but tonight he felt like he sort of wanted the company.

He felt the barest graze of a warm hand cupping his face. He opened his eyes. There was no one there. Jack was still standing in the doorway though. That was good. He closed his eyes again. This time he smelled a strange familiar perfume.

As he drifted off, he felt himself smiling sleepily.

He couldn't have said why, but he felt more peaceful than he had in a very long time.


	16. Chapter 16

Mac woke early the following morning, pleased that he actually felt well rested. He'd had the strangest dreams, and he could only remember bits and pieces of them, but he thought they'd been nice ones.

He rolled over and groaned a little. He was still pretty beat up, and could feel the pull of stitches on several of the knife wounds that had been inflicted on him in that cave.

"What the hell?" he grumbled, peeling his eyes open, only to find his room empty. Was he not remembering right that Cas had been going to heal him? He felt clear headed and really well other than the cuts and bruises, which was a big improvement over yesterday, no question.

He took a deep breath, doing a sort of mental inventory of his memories of the previous twenty-four hours or so and assessing his surroundings.

Still in a hospital room, still hooked up to an IV, still feeling mildly like he'd gotten in a fight with a pissed off honey badger. But, his brain didn't feel like it was trying to turn itself inside out, he'd slept unbelievably well, and at some point he couldn't quite put his finger on, he'd lost all the monitors he'd been wired up with.

He wondered where Jack had gotten to. Then he noticed Jack's black leather jacket was still hanging over the back of the chair next to his bed, so his partner couldn't have gotten far. A moment or two later he heard the familiar voice cheerfully flirting with at least three different people as Jack made his way down the hall. Mac adjusted his bed to sitting and grinned at Jack's look of surprise when he walked in with a drink carrier and brown paper bag.

"Hey, Jack," he greeted with a smile.

"Mornin', sunshine," Jack returned, smiling but with one eyebrow raised. He set down the drink carrier and pried one of the coffee cups out of it and held it out to Mac.

Mac took it with a nod of thanks. "I don't suppose there's breakfast in that bag, is there? The food here is … hospital flavored."

Jack chuckled to himself. The kid waking up with an appetite, not to mention his sense of humor, was his best indication that Cas had been as successful as he'd seemed certain of last night. Jack opened the bag and fished a Boston Creme donut out of the bag and passed it to Mac.

Mac beamed and took a huge, slightly messy bite. "Thanks, man," he said around a mouthful of donut.

Regardless of Jack's lingering concerns, Mac looked bright eyed and ready to take on the world. "How you feelin' this morning, pal?" he asked casually, taking a drink of his own coffee.

Mac swallowed his second bite of donut with a gulp of coffee. "Good. I mean … I thought Cas was going to take care of me being all dinged up, too, but none of that's too bad I guess. And otherwise, I'm totally fine." He waited for a second, wondering if Jack would contradict him, but Jack just grinned and got a glazed donut out of the bag for himself.

"Good. That's what I was hoping to hear."

He took a bite and chewed slowly, waiting to see if Mac would start his expected litany of reasons why they should get out of here but Mac just kind of gave him an odd look and finished his donut.

Finally Jack offered, "Cas can heal everything else up, no sweat, as soon as you get discharged and we go back to the motel to get our stuff but … He was more worried about the stuff going on in your head and … Sam made the very good point that explaining miracle wound erasure is always a complication that makes the papers. And making the papers …"

"Isn't exactly ideal for a couple of guys in our line of work. Makes perfect sense." He eyeballed the paper bag. "Got any more glazed in there? That smells really good." He tipped his chin at the donut Jack was finishing.

"Sure, bud," he replied, handing Mac the bag this time and letting him pick through the contents.

He was starting to feel a little more skeptical of Mac's good spirits. The kid still looked like he'd been through a meat grinder and Jack knew it made sense not to heal those visible wounds until Mac got out of here the more traditional way, but that didn't mean he had to like it. And he didn't want Mac to do his usual 'pretend everything's great' routine if he wasn't really okay enough to make it safely to where Cas and the Winchesters were waiting. Not that Mac was showing any of the signs, but the kid had been known to play the game just long enough to lull those looking after him into a false sense of security.

Instead of a glazed, his partner came up with a chocolate frosted, with sprinkles, and started eating it, grinning like a twelve year old. "Thanks for breakfast Jack. Beats the hell out of tepid fake scrambled eggs, which is all they seem to serve here, if I'm remembering the last couple of mornings accurately. Three days, right?" he asked, seeming only vaguely curious if his brain was giving him accurate information.

Jack agreed, "Yeah, this is day four actually."

Mac nodded, taking another drink of coffee. That actually lined up with his memories. The first "day" had really been the night they'd brought him in though. He gave Jack another small smile, thinking if he was inflating the time Mac had been here in his head by calling emergency treatment in the middle of the night a whole day, he was definitely in helicopter parent mode, and no amount of angel promises were going to get him out of it.

Mac would have to do the work himself of letting Jack know all was well. He started with a reassuring smile and was about to just lay all those thoughts out for Jack, but Jack interrupted before he could say anything.

Jack finally had to ask. "Alright, kid, what gives? You haven't asked me for your bag, or when you can get out of here ... I half expected to come back from running across the street for provisions to find you ransacking the room for clothes."

"You think the doctor is going to be down with letting me out of here this morning?"

Mac looked a little hopeful. He figured Jack would know where the doctor's head was at relative to his condition. He was sure Jack had been bugging her about it incessantly. Also, from what he remembered, she was on the conservative side, treatment-wise and he hadn't let himself get as far as hoping he'd get out of here today, mostly because he hadn't figured out how to talk her into it yet.

"Because, that'd be great. It's probably early enough to get a flight home later … And … What?" he asked, brow knitted, and almost glaring at his partner.

Jack was laughing softly. "I think we need to get Cas back in here. I'm pretty sure you're possessed."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Mac asked, but he was grinning at Jack's expression.

"You know exactly what I mean, kid. You're usually in such a tear to get out of one of these places you don't even wait for the bleeding to stop before you're half out the door, arguing with anyone who gets in your way until they rage quit the conversation, up to and including me."

Mac shook his head as though he thought Jack was exaggerating terrible, despite knowing that was actually reasonably accurate. "I'm never even close to that bad."

Jack gave him the look. The one that said he probably had video footage to prove his point. Then he winked.

"Seein' you just eatin' your breakfast … all agreeable about the idea of being let loose on someone else's time table … You gotta give me that it's at least a little strange even."

Mac shrugged, giving Jack a small smile. "I'm just not that worried about it I guess. I mean, you already said Cas is willing to heal up the rest of this when I get out … I don't want to draw too much attention to myself here, like you said, and I don't know … I mean, I want to leave, of course, but …" He frowned for a second. "It's just not bothering me to be here. Which I guess _is_ a little weird."

He shrugged again.

Jack sat back, contemplating his partner for a minute. "Do you remember anything about last night?" he asked gently.

Mac shook his head, chewing his lip for a second. "Not really … Just that I felt … Safe. Happy. Not worried about anything. I felt like …" He took a deep breath. "I felt like I haven't felt since I was a little kid. And I still sort of do. Just good, you know, like it's all gonna work out."

Jack was still giving him a very speculative look, but it didn't look overly worried or anything, just a little uncertain, and somewhat pleased. Jack handed Mac a napkin. "I'm glad."

He didn't say anything for a few minutes, just turned on the TV for the local news while they both worked on finishing their coffee. The broadcast revealed first, that the cold snap that had been plaguing the area had lifted and it was expected to be sunny and in the sixties.

The local schools had been and would remain closed for at least the rest of the week due to a fugitive at large in the community who had been targeting children. Parents were advised to supervise their kids closely until more information was available from the authorities. That segued into the story about the missing persons, the children being recovered, a consultant who had apparently been hired by one of the affected families being injured in that operation, and the woman responsible having apparently fled the area.

Jack glanced at Mac, wondering what he was making of the news. It didn't appear he was really paying much attention. He was half smiling to himself, looking out the window. He'd picked up one of the paperclips Jack had left on his bedside table and was absently bending it, looking thoughtful, forehead creasing and smoothing with the tide of ideas. He realized Jack was near to staring at him and he grinned.

"That's all good. Very solid explanations people can accept. And it makes our being here totally unremarkable. Families in crisis frequently hire outside consultants when they're unhappy with local law enforcement's results."

Jack grinned. "I didn't think you were payin' any attention to that."

Mac rolled his eyes. "Since when do I ever not pay attention to relevant information?"

Jack's smile slipped a little. "Mostly just the last couple of days, but …"

"I'm really okay, Jack. Great even." He paused, giving Jack a familiar almost mischievous sideways grin of his own, before tossing Jack the paperclip he'd bent into the shape of an angel wing. "Well, I will be, once I get on the right side of the front doors of this place."

"There he is," Jack chuckled.

Mac's grin turned a little sheepish. "I said it wasn't bothering me, not that I was having fun, Jack."

Jack tilted his head to one side. "Want me to go drum up the doc and see if she's feeling agreeable this morning?"

Mac shrugged, thinking he'd prefer sooner to later, but she seemed like the sort who would dig in her heels if she was annoyed. "I'm sure she'll be around. But … if you wanted to get me my clothes … that'd be cool."

Jack felt something inside of him relax. Mac was back, same as always. Well, maybe not the same. Something had definitely changed last night. But it clearly wasn't a bad thing. "I've got your bag in the car," Jack replied, getting up to go retrieve it.

Mac looked just slightly indignant as he reached for the bag of donuts and fished another one out. "And you didn't just bring it in, because ..?"

"Because I know you," Jack said with a little smirk and shake of his head. "Since we seem to be encountering the reasonable version of Angus MacGyver this morning, I'll go get it."

Mac snickered, taking a bite of his third donut. He didn't miss Jack's approving look at his appetite, and he sort of wanted to say if donuts from outside were the normal breakfast option when he was stuck in one of these places Jack would never have to worry about him eating. Crappy eggs he could handle. The ones in MREs were barely identifiable as food, but at least the Army seemed to know it and supplied plenty of Tabasco packets to hide them under. In a Hospital, you were lucky if they'd give you ketchup. Besides, he thought Jack's assertion that dough fried in Texas just tasted better might be accurate.

The doctor, an altogether motherly woman who was maybe ten years older than Jack came in just as he was going out. She tried to look disapproving as Mac swallowed his bite of donut with some now-tepid coffee. "That's against the rules you know, young man," she said, sounding prepared to instruct him as to why.

Jack laughed as he walked down the hall after hearing Mac's answer.

"Doc, I know you've mostly seen me half asleep, but well-rested, I've gotta warn you … the one thing I really suck at is following rules."

0-0-0

"Thanks, Cas," Mac said, holding out his hand after the angel removed the rest of Mac's injuries with a light touch over his heart.

Ignoring Mac's offered hand, Castiel pulled him into a bone crushing hug. "Coming back here after you have seen Heaven is one of the most difficult things a soul can be asked to do. You are very brave, Angus. I'm sorry … Mac. I will try harder to remember to …"

"Don't worry about it, Cas. You call me whatever you want." Mac offered a small smile, showing he really was sincere and not just trying to let Cas off the hook.

Cas stepped back from Mac, eyes searching his face for a moment. "You are truly well, then, Mac."

Mac smiled a little. "Yeah, Cas, I believe I am."

"Winchesters!" Cas said, clearly pleased, spinning to look at Sam and Dean, who were both leaning against one of the fenders of Dean's car. "Your carelessness has not done any permanent harm to our new friend. I am no longer angry with you on Mac's behalf."

Mac laughed a little at that, and heard Jack's soft laughter from beside him.

"That makes one of us, Cas," Jack said, pretended hardness in his voice.

Dean still looked appropriately chagrined as he took the few steps to get to a conversational distance with his cousin and his partner. He made brief eye contact with Jack, then looked at Mac seriously. "I'm sorry I got you involved, Mac."

Mac extended his hand, this time pretty sure he could count on not receiving an unexpected hug. "Thanks, but … I'm good. Seriously. I think …" He paused, frowning just a little. "I think I'm glad this happened. I can't say why exactly … Just little things keep coming to me and … I'm just … good."

He shrugged helplessly. Mac really liked being able to explain himself. But whenever he started to try to put words to the things he remembered both from La Llorona holding him captive and from … well, from Heaven … it just didn't seem important to explain oir if it did, he couldn't find adequate words.

And he still had that inexplicable feeling that everything was going to work out in the end. He just had to keep doing what he did, keep being who he was, and maybe, just maybe, letting go of the stuff that wasn't so great. That might take some practice, but he was willing to try.

Dean shook his hand warmly, then led Jack a short distance away for a private conversation. Sam grinned at Mac. "You know he's giving Jack the 'I know things seem fine but keep a close eye on that kid because angels don't really understand humans' talk right now."

Mac shook his head. "I wonder if they realize how much alike they are."

Cas stepped between them. "Probably about as much as you two realize that you have much in common."

Mac grinned. "You mean a couple of nerds who love research and like evidence and get driven to distraction by overprotective big brother types? Nah, I hadn't noticed any similarities."

Sam snickered. "Yeah, details like that are always getting by me, too, Cas."

Cas turned to face them and narrowed his eyes at both of them, not quite smiling. "You just did a sarcasm. Both of you."

It wasn't supposed to be a question, but they could both hear it. Mac laughed. "Yes. We did. Good catch."

Cas grinned and then he was gone.

"You ever get used to that?" Mac asked with a little shake of his head, almost like he needed to clear it.

"Nope," Sam shrugged. "But you do learn to just assimilate it as part of reality after a while. Like a lot of other things we've seen."

Mac nodded. "Yeah, I wouldn't have believed it, but I think I'm already getting there."

Jack and Dean rejoined them then and friendly goodbyes were exchanged all around.

Jack and Mac walked toward their waiting vehicle. As Mac climbed in he asked with a smirk, "So did Dean give you the 'keep an eye on him' lecture Sam warned me about."

Jack just laughed.

"Like I need a Winchester to tell me how to look out for you, brother."

0-0-0

Matty was in full flower, firing repeated questions at Jack. Mac widened his eyes at his partner across the table, raising an eyebrow as he reached for another paperclip. "Wow," he mouthed. She was taking the lack of apprehending any suspect in a case Phoenix had been asked to consult on rather personally.

"You seriously mean to tell me that you let another suspect that kidnapped and tortured your partner get away?"

Mac didn't think he'd ever heard Matty sound more disapproving in his life. Jack was starting to look really uncomfortable, too. Everybody picked on Mac, saying he was a terrible liar. Thing was, Mac was actually a damned good liar, when he wanted to be. You had to be to be a spy. Usually, so was Jack. But when it came to putting one over on Matty, Mac was the pro. He figured he'd better step in before she really got personal and pushed Jack's red line, or their story just started to fall apart under scrutiny.

"Matty … The only two local cops we had with us had their hands full with the kids she'd cut loose and Jack was kind of busy trying to keep me from bleeding to death, so it's not like anyone could chase down the suspect."

Her glare transferred to him. Her tone was pure accusation. "And you."

Mac's eyes went just a little wide. "Um … yeah?"

"Letting yourself get pinched! Practically getting yourself killed! This is becoming a ridiculously bad habit, MacGyver."

"I … um … sorry?" he said tentatively.

"And what are you two even doing back here already? Shouldn't you still be in the hospital? Or did you just bribe or irritate them into letting you go? Maybe I should just send you to Medical. Maybe if you're there for a couple of days we can avoid having anyone get taken hostage for a minute. And maybe you'll think twice before you do something so careless again!" Her genuine concern was ratcheting up her irritation.

Mac let out a breath. He should have kept his mouth shut. Now that he'd spoken and Matty was focused on him, she was wearing that angry babysitter face that he really hated. "I'm fine, Matty. And I didn't so much as step a toe out of bed until the doctor in Texas said it was okay. I wasn't being careless. I was just focused on those missing kids and this woman got the drop on me. You can't possibly still be holding the Murdoc thing against me. He jumped me in my own home."

"I'm just doing my job, looking out for my agents," she said with eyes narrowed at him.

"Well, you're making it sound like sending your people to Medical is either a punishment or a deterrent … or maybe both. Which I sort of suspected before now, but that seems kind of …"

"My only option with you two!" she snapped. Then she went back to questioning Jack about every aspect of the mission, ending about forty minutes later with a practically growled, "And now I'm going to have the two of you out of commission for weeks! I ought to make it without pay!"

"Weeks? We're back, ready to work, Director Webber." Jack gave her a very charming smile.

"And I'm likely to let an agent recovering from hemorrhagic shock just go galavanting all over the planet," she replied with heavy sarcasm.

Mac just looked at Jack and shook his head. There wasn't any way around an enforced vacation without having to explain why it wasn't necessary.

"Well, I suppose that's wise, there Matty, but we could take on local things, free up another team for the more excitin' stuff and …"

"Why aren't you freaking out, Jack?" Matty's eyes narrowed further.

"Huh?" Jack took on the look of a deer caught in headlights on a dark road at midnight.

"Your partner was abducted and tortured for the second time this year. This time he was in real danger of death from blood loss. And you just march back in here like nothing happened? After Murdoc grabbed him, you slept at Mac's house for a week and practically followed him to the bathroom for a month."

Mac was just trying to keep eye contact with Jack and giving almost imperceptible head shakes and non-verbal 'stick to the story' encouragement.

"I … um …" Jack began.

"What really happened in Texas? Because I know you're full of it. And I knew it before you acted weird about Mac's injury, which I'm assuming is even worse than the medical records the hospital sent over since even you're trying to cover up for Blondie."

She glared at both of them.

"You let a dangerous maniac slip right through your fingers! And it happened because nothing about this mission was on the up and up! Officers Tom Baker and Matt Smith not only don't work for the Los Reyes PD, but they don't exist. Those names belong to a couple of guys who've starred in Doctor Who. Who were those guys, why'd you really go to Texas, and what the hell really happened? I want answers. Now! Or I _will_ split up this team. If your lucky. Maybe I'll just fire you!"

Jack swallowed hard.

Mac jumped in before Jack could speak, going in with the best defense he could think of, which was attacking Matty's indignant position.

"Jack's not covering up anything and you know it. You've seen my hospital records, I'm sure. Besides … We didn't just take off, you gave us the assignment! How were we supposed to know Baker and Smith weren't the real deal?" he finished, hoping he was matching her indignant accusatory tone.

From her expression he thought he'd done alright, then she said, "Like I believe a full blown geek like you didn't recognize a Doctor Who reference."

Mac inhaled, trying to think of something to say.

Then Jack just blurted. "Those guys are my cousins. And that 'woman' was a ..."

"Oh, Jack, don't," Mac said almost under his breath.

Jack either didn't hear him or couldn't stop himself. "Demon or something. Like for real Matty. All those little kids we rescued were possessed and that ... thing ... she didn't just cut on Mac, she drank his blood. She killed a couple people doin' too."

"Jack Wyatt Dalton," Matty said with a clear warning.

"I swear, Matilda, it's true," Jack said in his most earnest, all or nothing voice. "And Mac was in a real bad way, but he managed to make this trap that stuck her to one spot and my cousins they did a spell and locked her up in some kinda magic box thing, and we got Mac to the hospital, but the thing, she's gotten in his head and messed with his mind, with his soul, Matty. I swear I don't think I've ever been more scared in my entire life."

Now Matty's eyes were searching Jack's face and her frown transformed from angry to truly worried. She glanced at Mac, but he just looked away, fidgeting with the paperclip in his hands. He couldn't say stuff like this out loud. It still just sounded so crazy.

"So," Matty said carefully, a slight quaver in her voice which told Mac they were at a very dangerous point in this conversation. "If he was that badly off, what's he doing here, out of the hospital, with you pushing for the two of you to be able to stay on the duty roster?"

"My cousins' friend is an angel and he healed him. First he let him have a peek at Heaven and his mom to heal up his mind and then he healed the rest of the stuff after the doctor let him go this morning. We didn't think it'd be a real good idea to heal up the visible stuff at the hospital because that woulda meant questions and …"

"MacGyver?" Matty began, her voice a strange combination of concerned friend and irritated supervisor. "What the hell is he talking about?"

Mac swallowed. Then he puffed out a long breath through his cheeks. He wanted to back Jack up, didn't want Matty to even think about separating them or worse, kicking them out of Phoenix, but he found saying out loud, yeah I saw my mom in heaven after a demon tried to kill me and then an angel fixed me all up, was not something he could force himself to do. Not if he could avoid it.

He tossed his most recent paper clip sculpture on the table. "Look, Matty. Some bad things happened. As much as I'd like to tell you about them, it feels to personal. You know the mission critical parts. So, unless you force the issue, I'm just going to say that I can neither confirm nor deny Agent Dalton's version of events."

Her expression wavered somewhere between a smile and a frown. He leaned forward. "You saw the police photographs of my injuries, right?"

"Yes, Mac, I did. And I read the clinical reports from your care team."

"Good," he smirked and rolled up his right sleeve, all the way to his bicep. "So you know how badly I was cut?"

She nodded and he extended his arm and turned it over.

"How in the hell ..?" She looked from his perfectly smooth arm to his slightly smiling face that conveyed both sympathy at how hard this was to believe and amusement at her sudden discomfort. He couldn't tell if she was more uncomfortable with having to let Jack off the hook, or the fact that he'd more or less just said, oh hey, angels are totally real. "You had a scar from explosive shrapnel on this arm. I've heard that Christmas story and seen it."

Mac grinned openly now, rolling his sleeve back down. "Yeah, well, Cas maybe got a little over enthusiastic. He kinda likes me."

Jack smiled at Mac. He could appreciate that the kid wanted to avoid saying anything he didn't have to, but even what he managed took a yard of guts, based on his past relationship with Matty and her constantly calling him into question.

"Cas?" she began. "You know what I don't want to know." She gave them both a hard look. "Something tells me you two are up to something. But I do know I can't tell Oversight you fought a demon and had a little vacation to Heaven."

She stared at them for a long minute.

Mac started to get fidgety again, reached out for a paper clip, and then just let it drop when she widened her eyes at him.

"Here's how we are handling this," she said calmly. "If this case gets called up for Oversight review, you will tell them exactly what you told me … In. Your. Original. Report. Is that clear?"

Jack only nodded, but Mac managed, "Yes, ma'am."

"You are taking a week off, wherein I do not want to so much as receive a text from either of you. No coming in to the lab. No showing up at the gym. No coming to this side of the city. And definitely no interacting with other Phoenix employees."

Mac swallowed hard this time. "Um … Matty … I live with Bozer. It's not gonna be like I can …"

"You are not to breathe a word of this insane story to Wilt Bozer. I'll send him on a field assignment. If it wraps up before your enforced R&R is over you are going to let him go full Mama Bear on you from perfectly chilling your gingerale to making you his mother's chicken soup. He knows you were hurt and he's been beside himself. You're going to let him get it out of his system. Understood?"

Mac cringed a little and sighed, but nodded and repeated, "Yes, ma'am."

"Jack?"

"I … um … Yes, ma'am," he agreed, thinking Bozer would be even harder to lie to than Matty, but that it was probably for the best, at least if Mac agreed to it. That would remain to be seen. Mac didn't keep much of anything from Boze, especially since Murdoc had blown his cover.

"Before you come back to work after this week off, you will report to Medical and let them run every lab known to man so Oversight can see for themselves that you're fit for duty. Agreed?"

Mac hesitated. "Um … If I go to Medical… how are we explaining that I'm not still healing and stitched up like Frankenstein?"

She glared at him. It was a good point. She considered it for a moment.

"You've been trying to convince them of your miraculous healing powers for years. You'll just have to double down," she finished a little smugly. "You. Labs. Oversight happy. Yes?"

Mac sighed and nodded. "Fine."

"Good." Matty nodded, looking almost pleased with her solution, but also looking like maybe she was getting a monster headache, too.

Jack and Mac exchanged a look. Silence started to draw out.

Finally Matty snapped. "Go home then! Get out of here! Before I change my mind and decide you both need a psych workup that'll keep you out of the field for a month."

"Yes, ma'am!" Mac practically leapt up and headed for the door, and Jack quickly followed.

Jack turned around at the last moment, "Are you sure you want both of us out of the office for …"

Mac pulled on Jack's arm. "Let's just get out of here, Jack, before she adds anything else to the list."

As their chatter faded down the hall, Matty sighed.

She didn't know quite what to make of their story. It was obviously a wild fabrication but … Mac's not just injury-free but scar-free arm made her heart flutter just a little. It leant a distressing credibility to another one of the team's wild post mission justifications.

She'd had about enough for the day, and they were the last team she needed to check in with. She was going to go home and have a very stiff drink, and just try to forget their crazy-assed story.

She tucked a few papers into a folder and stood.

The light glinting off one of Mac's bent paper clips caught her eyes. He'd littered the table with about thirty of them during the debrief. She reached out and picked it up.

It was an angel wing. All of them were.

She sighed again, before tucking one of them into her pocket.

Make that two drinks, she thought.

~ End ~


End file.
